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THE  UNKNOWN  GUEST 


THE   WORKS   OF   MAURICE   MAETERLINCK 

ESSAYS 

The  Treasure  of  the  Humble 

Wisdom  and  Destiny 

The  Life  of  the  Bee 

The  Buried  Temple 

The  Double  Garden 

The  Measure  of  the  Hours 

On  Emerson,  and  Other  Essays 

Our   Eternity 

The  Unknown  Guest 

The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

Mountain    Paths 


PLAYS 

Sister  Beatrice,  and  Ardiane  and  Barbe  Bleue 

JOYZELLE,    and    MoNNA    VanNA 

The  Blue  Bird,  A   Fairy  Play 

Mary   Magdalene 

Pelleas  and  Melisande,  and  Other  Plays 

Princess  Maleine 

The  Intruder,  and  Other  Plays 

Aglavaine  and  Selysette 

The  Miracle  of  Saint  Anthony 

The   Betrothal;   A   Sequel   to   The   Blue   Bird 

Poems 

HOLIDAY  EDITIONS 

Our  Friend  the  Dog 
The  Swarm 

Death 

Thoughts   from    Maeterlinck 

The   Blue   Bird 

The  Life  of  the  Bee 

News  of  Spring  and  Other  Nature  Studies 

The  Light  Beyond 


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^ke    UDnkaowa    Cfaedt 


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STSauzice  albaetezLinck 


^zandlatea  by 

[Lexan^ez  ^elxelza  de  cJibattod 


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zDodd,  uTbead  and  (bompany 
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Copyright,  1914 
By  The  International  Magazine  Company 

Copyright,  1914 
By  Metropolitan  Magazine  Company 

Copyright,  1914 
By  Harper  &  Brothers 

Copyright,  1914 
By  Dodd,  Mead  and  Company 


I  032. 


translator's    note 

Of  the  five  essays  In  this  volume,  The 
Knowledge  of  the  Future  has  appeared  in 
the  Cosmopolitan  Magazine,  of  New  York, 
The  Elberfeld  Horses  in  the  Metropolitan 
Magazine,  of  the  same  city,  and  The  Un- 
known Guest  in  Harper's  Magazine.  The 
remainder  have  not,  at  this  present  date, 
been  published  elsewhere. 

A.  T.  DE  M. 

Chelsea,  20th  June,  1914- 


CONTENTS 

translator's  note 
introduction 

CHAPTER 

I.    PHANTASMS     OF     THE     LIVING 
AND  THE  DEAD    . 


II.    PSYCHOMETRY 


III.    THE       KNOWLEDGE       OF       THE 
FUTURE  .... 


IV.    THE  ELBERFELD  HORSES 
V.    THE    UNKNOWN    GUEST 


PAGE 

5 
9 

23 
59 

107 
219 
361 


INTRODUCTION 
I 

MY  ESSAY  on  Death^  led  me  to  make 
a  conscientious  enquiry  into  the 
present  position  of  the  great  mystery,  an  en- 
quiry which  I  have  endeavoured  to  render 
as  complete  as  possible.  I  had  hoped  that 
a  single  volume  would  be  able  to  contain 
the  result  of  these  investigations,  which, 
I  may  say  at  once,  will  teach  nothing  to 
those  who  have  been  over  the  same  ground 
and  which  have  nothing  to  recommend 
them  except  their  sincerity,  their  impartial- 
ity and  a  certain  scrupulous  accuracy.  But, 
as  I  proceeded,  I  saw  the  field  widening 
under  my  feet,  so  much  so  that  I  have  been 
oblige^  to  divide  my  work  into  two  almost 

^Published  in  English,  in  an  enlarged  form,  under 
the  title  of  Our  Eternity  (London  and  New  York, 
1913). — Translator's  Note. 

9 


Introduction 

equal  parts.  The  first  is  now  published  and 
is  a  brief  study  of  veridical  apparitions 
and  hallucinations  and  haunted  houses,  or, 
if  you  will,  the  phantasms  of  the  living  and 
the  dead;  of  those  manifestations  which 
have  been  oddly  and  not  very,  appropri- 
ately described  as  "psychometric";  of  the 
knowledge  of  the  future:  presentiments, 
omens,  premonitions,  precognitions  and  the 
rest;  and  lastly  of  the  Elberfeld  horses.  In 
the  second,  which  will  be  published  later,  I 
shall  treat  of  the  miracles  of  Lourdes  and 
other  places,  the  phenomena  of  so-called 
materialization,  of  the  divining-rod  and  of 
fluidic  asepsis,  not  unmindful  withal  of  a 
diamond  dust  of  the  miraculous  that  hangs 
over  the  greater  marvels  in  that  strange  at- 
mosphere into  which  we  are  about  to  pass. 


When  I  speak  of  the  present  position  of 
the  mystery,  I  of  course  do  not  mean  the 

10 


Introduction 

mystery  of  life,  its  end  and  its  beginnings, 
nor  yet  the  great  riddle  of  the  universe 
which  lies  about  us.  In  this  sense,  all  is 
mystery,  and,  as  I  have  said  elsewhere,  is 
likely  always  to  remain  so;  nor  is  it  prob- 
able that  we  shall  ever  touch  any  point  of 
even  the  utmost  borders  of  knowledge  or 
certainty.  It  is  here  a  question  of  that 
which,  in  the  midst  of  this  recognized  and 
usual  mystery,  the  familiar  mystery  of 
which  we  are  almost  oblivious,  suddenly 
disturbs  the  regular  course  of  our  general 
ignorance.  In  themselves,  these  facts 
which  strike  us  as  supernatural  are  no  more 
so  than  the  others;  possibly  they  are  rarer, 
or,  to  be  more  accurate,  less  frequently  or 
less  easily  observed.  In  any  case,  their 
deep-seated  causes,  while  being  probably 
neither  more  remote  nor  more  difficult  of 
access,  seem  to  lie  hidden  in  an  unknown 
region   less  often   visited  by  our   science, 

which  after  all  is  but  a  reassuring  and  con- 

II 


Introduction 

ciliatory  expression  of  our  Ignorance.  To- 
day, thanks  to  the  labours  of  the  Society 
for  Psychical  Research  and  a  host  of  other 
seekers,  we  are  able  to  approach  these  phe- 
nomena as  a  whole  with  a  certain  confi- 
dence. Leaving  the  realm  of  legend,  of 
after-dinner  stories,  old  wives'  tales,  illu- 
sions and  exaggerations,  we  find  ourselves 
at  last  on  circumscribed  but  fairly  safe 
ground.  This  does  not  mean  that  there  are 
no  other  supernatural  phenomena  besides 
those  collected  in  the  publications  of  the 
society  in  question  and  in  a  few  of  the  more 
weighty  reviews  which  have  adopted  the 
same  methods.  Notwithstanding  all  their 
diligence,  which  for  over  thirty  years  has 
been  ransacking  the  obscure  corners  of  our 
planet,  it  is  inevitable  that  a  good  many 
things  escape  their  notice,  besides  which  the 
rigour  of  their  investigations  makes  them 
reject  three-fourths  of  those  which  ar6 
brought  before  them.      But  we   may  say 

12 


Introduction 

that  the  twenty-six  volumes  of  the  society's 
Proceedings  ajid  the  fifteen  or  sixteen  vol- 
umes of  its  Journal,  together  with  the 
twenty-three  annuals  of  the  Annales  des 
sciences  psychiques,  to  mention  only  this 
one  periodical  of  signal  excellence,  embrace 
for  the  moment  the  whole  field  of  the  ex- 
traordinary and  offer  some  Instances  of  all 
the  abnormal  manifestations  of  the  inex- 
plicable. We  are  henceforth  able  to 
classify  them,  to  divide  and  subdivide  them 
into  genera,  species  and  varieties.  This  Is 
not  much,  you  may  say;  but  It  Is  thus  that 
every  science  begins  and  furthermore  that 
many  a  one  ends.  We  have  therefore  suffi- 
cient evidence,  facts  that  can  scarcely  be 
disputed,  to  enable  us  to  consult  them  prof- 
itably, to  recognize  whither  they  lead,  to 
form  some  Idea  of  their  general  character 
and  perhaps  to  trace  their  sole  source  by 
gradually  removing  the  weeds  and  rubbish 
which    for   so   many   hundreds   and   thou- 

13 


Introduction 

sands  of  years  have  hidden  it   from  our 
eyes. 

3 

Truth  to  tell,  these  supernatural  mani- 
festations seem  less  marvellous  and  less 
fantastic  than  they  did  some  centuries  ago; 
and  we  are  at  first  a  little  disappointed. 
One  would  think  that  even  the  mysterious 
has  its  ups  and  downs  and  remains  subject 
to  the  caprices  of  some  strange  extramun- 
dane  fashion;  or  perhaps,  to  be  more  exact, 
it  is  evident  that  the  majority  of  those 
legendary  miracles  could  not  withstand  the 
rigorous  scrutiny  of  our  day.  Those  which 
emerge  triumphant  from  the  test  and  defy 
our  less  credulous  and  more  penetrating 
vision  are  all  the  more  worthy  of  holding 
our  attention.  They  are  not  the  last  sur- 
vivals of  the  riddle,  for  this  continues 
to  exist  in  its  entirety  and  grows  greater 
in  proportion  as  we  throw  light  upon  it; 

14 


Introduction 

but  we  can  perhaps  see  in  them  the  supreme 
or  else  the  first  efforts  of  a  force  which 
does  not  appear  to  reside  wholly  in  our 
sphere.  They  suggest  blows  struck  from 
without  by  an  Unknown  even  more  un- 
known than  that  which  we  think  we 
know,  an  Unknown  which  is  not  that  of  the 
universe,  not  that  which  we  have  gradually 
made  into  an  inoffensive  and  amiable  Un- 
known, even  as  we  have  made  the  universe 
a  sort  of  province  of  the  earth,  but  a 
stranger  arriving  from  another  world,  an 
unexpected  visitor  who  comes  in  a  rather 
sinister  way  to  trouble  the  comfortable 
quiet  in  which  we  were  slumbering,  rocked 
by  the  firm  and  watchful  hand  of  orthodox 
science. 

4 

Let  us  first  be  content  to  enumerate  them. 
We  shall  find  that  we  have  table-turning, 
with  its  raps;  the  movements  and  transpor- 
ts 


Introduction 

tations  of  inanimate  objects  without  con- 
tact; luminous  phenomena;  liicidite,  or 
clairvoyance;  veridical  apparitions  or  hal- 
lucinations; haunted  houses;  bllocations  and 
so  forth;  communications  with  the  dead; 
the  divining-rod;  the  miraculous  cures  of 
Lourdes  and  elsewhere;  fluldic  asepsis;  and 
lastly  the  famous  thinking  animals  of  El- 
berfeld  and  Mannheim.  These,  if  I  be  not 
mistaken,  after  eliminating  all  that  is  in- 
sufficiently attested,  constitute  the  residue 
or  caput  mortuum  of  this  latter-day  miracle. 
Everybody  has  heard  of  table-turning, 
which  may  be  called  the  A  B  C  of  occult 
science.  It  Is  so  common  and  so  easily  pro- 
duced that  the  Society  for  Psychical  Re- 
search has  not  thought  It  necessary  to  de- 
vote special  attention  to  the  subject.  I  need 
hardly  add  that  we  must  take  count  only 
of  movements  or  "raps"  obtained  without 
the  hands  touching  the  table,  so  as  to  re- 
move  every   possibility   of   fraud   or   un- 

j6 


Introduction 

conscious  complicity.  To  obtain  these 
movements  it  is  enough,  but  it  is  also  in- 
dispensable that  those  who  form  the 
"chain"  should  include  a  person  endowed 
with  mediumistic  faculties.  I  repeat,  the 
experiment  is  within  the  reach  of  any  one 
who  cares  to  try  it  under  the  requisite  con- 
ditions; and  it  is  as  incontestable  as  the  po- 
larization of  light  or  as  crystallization  by 
means  of  electric  currents. 

In  the  same  group  may  be  placed  the 
movement  and  transportation  of  objects 
without  contact,  the  touches  of  spirit  hands, 
the  luminous  phenomena  and  materializa- 
tions. Like  table-turning,  they  demand  the 
presence  of  a  medium.  I  need  not  observe 
that  we  here  find  ourselves  in  the  happy 
hunting-ground  of  the  Impostor  and  that 
even  the  most  powerful  mediums,  those  pos- 
sessing the  most  genuine  and  undeniable 
gifts,  such  as  the  celebrated  Eusapia  Pala- 
dlno,  are  upon  occasion — and  the  occasion 

17 


Introduction 

occurs  but  too  often — incorrigible  cheats. 
But,  when  we  have  made  every  allowance 
for  fraud,  there  nevertheless  remains  a  con- 
siderable number  of  incidents  so  rigorously 
attested  that  we  must  needs  accept  them  or 
else  abandon  all  human  certainty. 

The  case  is  not  quite  the  same  with  levi- 
tation  and  the  wonders  performed,  so  trav- 
ellers tell  us,  by  certain  Indian  jugglers. 
Though  the  prolonged  burial  of  a  living 
being  is  very  nearly  proved  and  can  doubt- 
less be  physiologically  explained,  there  are 
many  other  tricks  on  which  we  have  so  far 
no  authoritative  pronouncement.  I  will  not 
speak  of  the  "mango-tree"  and  the  "basket- 
trick,"  which  are  mere  conjuring;  but  the 
"fire-walk"  and  the  famous  "rope-climbing- 
trick"  remain  more  of  a  mystery. 

The  fire-walk,  or  walk  on  red-hot  bricks 
or  glowing  coals,  is  a  sort  of  religious  cere- 
mony practised  in  the  Indies,  in  some  of 
the   Polynesian  islands,   in   Mauritius  and 

i8 


Introduction 

elsewhere.  As  the  result  of  incantations  ut- 
tered by  the  high-priest,  the  bare  feet  of 
the  faithful  who  follow  him  upon  the  bed 
of  burning  pebbles  or  brands  seem  to  be- 
come almost  insensible  to  the  touch  of  fire. 
Travellers  are  anything  but  agreed  whether 
the  heat  of  the  surface  traversed  is  really 
intolerable,  whether  the  extraordinary 
power  of  endurance  is  explained  by  the 
thickness  of  the  horny  substance  which  pro- 
tects the  soles  of  the  natives'  feet,  whether 
the  feet  are  burnt  or  whether  the  skin  re- 
mains untouched;  and,  under  present  con- 
ditions, the  question  is  too  uncertain  to 
make  it  worth  while  to  linger  over  it. 

"Rope-climbing"  is  more  extraordinary. 
The  juggler  takes  his  stand  in  an  open 
space,  far  from  any  tree  or  house.  He  is 
accompanied  by  a  child;  and  his  only 
impedimenta  are  a  bundle  of  ropes  and  an 
old  canvas  sack.  The  juggler  throws  one 
end  of  the  rope  up  in  the  air;  and  the  rope, 

19 


Introduction 

as  though  drawn  by  an  invisible  hook,  un- 
coils and. rises  straight  into  the  sky  until 
the  end  disappears;  and,  soon  after,  there 
come  tumbling  from  the  blue  two  arms,  two 
legs,  a  head  and  so  on,  all  of  which  the  wiz- 
ard picks  up  and  crams  into  the  sack.  He 
next  utters  a  few  magic  words  over  it  and 
opens  it;  and  the  child  steps  out,  bowing 
and  smiling  to  the  spectators. 

This  Is  the  usual  form  taken  by  this  par- 
ticular sorcery.  It  Is  pretty  rare  and  seems 
to  be  practised  only  by  one  sect  which  origi- 
nated in  the  North-West  Provinces.  It  has 
not  yet  perhaps  been  sufficiently  investi- 
gated to  take  its  place  among  the  evidence 
mentioned  above.  If  it  were  really  as  I 
have  described,  it  could  hardly  be  explained 
save  by  some  strange  hallucinatory  power 
emanating  from  the  juggler  or  illusionist, 
who  Influences  the  audience  by  suggestion 
and  makes  it  see  what  he  wishes.  In  that 
case  the  suggestion  or  hallucination  covers 

20 


Introduction 

a  very  extensive  area.  In  point  of  fact, 
onlookers,  Europeans,  on  the  balconies  of 
houses  at  some  distance  from  the  crowd  of 
natives,  have  been  known  to  experience  the 
same  influence.  This  would  be  one  of  the 
most  curious  manifestations  of  that  "un- 
known guest"  of  which  we  shall  speak 
again  later  when,  after  enumerating  its  acts 
and  deeds,  we  try  to  investigate  and  note 
down  the  eccentricities  of  its  character. 

Levitation  in  the  proper  sense  of  the 
word,  that  is  to  say,  the  raising,  with- 
out contact,  and  floating  of  an  inani- 
mate object  or  even  of  a  person,  might 
possibly  be  due  to  the  same  hallu- 
cinatory power;  but  hitherto  the  instances 
have  not  been  sufficiently  numerous  or  au- 
thentic to  allow  us  to  draw  any  conclusions. 
Also  we  shall  meet  with  it  again  when  we 
come  to  the  chapter  treating  of  the  mate- 
rializations of  which  It  forms  part. 


21 


CHAPTER    I 

PHANTASMS    OF    THE    LIVING 
AND    THE    DEAD 


THE  UNKNOWN  GUEST 

CHAPTER    I 

PHANTASMS  OF  THE    LIVING  AND 
THE   DEAD 


THIS  brings  us  without  any  break  to 
the  consideration  of  veridical  appari- 
tions and  hallucinations  and  finally  to 
haunted  houses.  We  all  know  that  the 
phantasms  of  the  living  and  the  dead  have 
now  a  whole  literature  of  their  own,  a  lit- 
erature which  owes  its  birth  to  the  numer- 
ous and  conscientious  enquiries  conducted  in 
England,  France,  Belgium  and  the  United 
States  at  the  instance  of  the  Society  for 
Psychical  Research.  In  the  presence  of  the 
mass  of  evidence  collected,  it  would  be  ab- 
surd to  persist  in  denying  the  reality  of  the 

25 


The  Unknown  Guest 

phenomena  themselves.  It  is  by  this  time 
incontestable  that  a  violent  or  deep  emo- 
tion can  be  transmitted  instantaneously 
from  one  mind  to  another,  however  great 
the  distance  that  separates  the  mind  experi- 
encing the  emotion  from  the  mind  receiving 
the  communication.  It  is  most  often  mani- 
fested by  a  visual  hallucination,  more  rarely 
by  an  auditory  hallucination;  and,  as  the 
most  violent  emotion  which  man  can  un- 
dergo is  that  which  grips  and  overwhelms 
him  at  the  approach  or  at  the  very  moment 
of  death,  it  is  nearly  always  this  supreme 
emotion  which  he  sends  forth  and  directs 
with  incredible  precision  through  space,  if 
necessary  across  seas  and  continents, 
towards  an  Invisible  and  moving  goal. 
Again,  though  this  occurs  less  frequently, 
a  grave  danger,  a  serious  crisis  can  beget 
and  transmit  to  a  distance  a  similar  hal- 
lucination. This  is  what  the  S.  P.  R.  calls 
"phantasms  of  the  living."    When  the  hal- 

26 


The  Unknown  Guest 

luclnation  takes  place  some  time  after  the 
decease  of  the  person  whom  it  seems  to 
evoke,  be  the  interval  long  or  short,  it  is 
classed  among  the  "phantasms  of  the 
dead." 

The  latter,  the  so-called  "phantasms  of 
the  dead,"  are  the  rarest.  As  F.  W.  H. 
Myers  pointed  out  In  his  Human  Personal- 
ity, a  consideration  of  the  proportionate 
number  of  apparitions  observed  at  various 
periods  before  and  after  death  shows  that 
they  increase  very  rapidly  for  the  few  hours 
which  precede  death  and  decrease  grad- 
ually during  the  hours  and  days  which 
follow;  while  after  about  a  year's  time 
they  become  extremely  rare  and  excep- 
tional. 

However  exceptional  they  may  be,  these 
apparitions  nevertheless  exist  and  are 
proved,  as  far  as  anything  can  be  proved, 
by  abundant  testimony  of  a  very  precise 
character.     Instances  will  be  found  in  the 

27 


The  Unknown  Guest 

Proceedings,  notably  In  vol.  vl.,  pp.  13-65, 
etc. 

Whether  it  be  a  case  of  the  living,  the 
dying,  or  the  dead,  we  are  familiar  with 
the  usual  form  which  these  hallucinations 
take.  Indeed  their  main  outlines  hardly 
ever  vary.  Some  one,  in  his  bedroom,  in 
the  street,  on  a  journey,  no  matter  where, 
suddenly  sees  plainly  and  clearly  the  phan- 
tom of  a  relation  or  a  friend  of  whom  he 
was  not  thinking  at  the  time  and  whom  he 
knows  to  be  thousands  of  miles  away,  in 
America,  Asia  or  Africa  as  the  case  may 
be,  for  distance  does  not  count.  As  a  rule, 
the  phantom  says  nothing;  its  presence, 
which  is  always  brief,  is  but  a  sort  of  silent 
warning.  Sometimes  it  seems  a  prey  to 
futile  and  trivial  anxieties.  More  rarely. 
It  speaks,  though  saying  but  little  after  all. 
More  rarely  still,  It  reveals  something  that 
has  happened,  a  crime,  a  hidden  treasure 

of  which  no  one  else  could  know.     But  we 

28 


The  Unknown  Guest 

will  return  to  these  matters  after  complet- 
ing this  brief  enumeration. 


The  phenomenon  of  haunted  houses  re- 
sembles that  of  the  phantasms  of  the  dead, 
except  that  here  the  ghost  clings  to  the 
residence,  the  house,  the  building  and  in 
no  way  to  the  persons  who  inhabit  it.  By 
the  second  year  of  its  existence,  that  is  to 
say,  1884,  the  Committee  on  Haunted 
Houses  of  the  S.  P.  R.  had  selected  and 
made  an  analysis  of  some  sixty-five  cases 
out  of  hundreds  submitted  to  it,  twenty- 
eight  of  which  rested  upon  first-hand  and 
superior  evidence.^  It  is  worthy  of  remark, 
in  the  first  place,  that  these  authentic  nar- 
ratives bear  no  relation  whatever  to  the 
legendary  and  sensational  ghost-stories  that 
still  linger  in  many  English  and  American 

^Proceedings,  vol.  i.,   pp.  10T-115;  vol.  ii.,  pp.  137- 
151;  vol.  viii.,  pp.  311,  332,  etc. 

29 


The  Unknown  Guest 

magazines,  especially  in  the  Christmas  num- 
bers. They  mention  no  winding-sheets, 
coffins,  skeletons,  graveyards,  no  sulphurous 
flames,  curses,  blood-curdling  groans,  no 
clanking  chains,  nor  any  of  the  time- 
honoured  trappings  that  characterize  this 
rather  feeble  literature  of  the  supernatural. 
On  the  contrary,  the  scenes  enacted  in 
houses  that  appear  to  be  really  haunted  are 
generally  very  simple  and  insignificant,  not 
to  say  dull  and  commonplace.  The  ghosts 
are  quite  unpretentious  and  go  to  no  ex- 
pense in  the  matter  of  staging  or  costume. 
They  are  clad  as  they  were  when,  some- 
times many  years  ago,  they  led  their  quiet, 
unadventurous  life  within  their  own  home. 
We  find  in  one  case  an  old  woman,  with  a 
thin  grey  shawl  meekly  folded  over  her 
breast,  who  bends  at  night  over  the  sleep- 
ing occupants  of  her  old  home,  or  who  is 
frequently  encountered  in  the  hall  or  on 
the  stairs,  silent,  mysterious,  a  little  grim, 

30 


The  Unknown  Guest 

Or  else  it  Is  the  gentleman  with  a  lack- 
lustre eye  and  a  figured  dressing-gown  who 
walks  along  a  passage  brilliantly  illu- 
minated with  an  inexplicable  light.  Or 
again  we  have  another  elderly  lady,  dressed 
in  black,  who  is  often  found  seated  in  the 
bow-window  of  her  drawing-room.  When 
spoken  to,  she  rises  and  seems  on  the  point 
of  replying,  but  says  nothing.  When  pur- 
sued or  met  in  a  corner,  she  eludes  all  con- 
tact and  vanishes.  Strings  are  fastened 
across  the  staircase  with  glue;  she  passes 
and  the  strings  remain  as  they  were.  The 
ghost — and  this  happens  in  the  majority  of 
cases — Is  seen  by  all  the  people  staying  In 
the  house:  relations,  friends,  old  servants 
and  new.  Can  It  be  a  matter  of  suggestion, 
of  collective  hallucination?  At  any  rate, 
strangers,  visitors  who  have  had  nothing 
said  to  them,  see  it  as  the  others  do  and 
ask,  Innocently: 

31 


The  Unknown  Guest 

"Who  is  the  lady  in  mourning  whom  I 
met  in  the  dining-room?" 

If  it  is  a  case  of  collective  suggestion, 
we  should  have  to  admit  that  it  is  a  sub- 
conscious suggestion  emitted  without  the 
knowledge  of  the  participants,  which  indeed 
is  quite  possible. 

Though  they  belong  to  the  same  order, 
I  will  not  here  mention  the  exploits  of  what 
the  Germans  call  the  Poltergeist,  which  take 
the  form  of  flinging  stones,  ringing  bells, 
turning  mattresses,  upsetting  furniture  and 
so  forth.  These  matters  are  always  open 
to  suspicion  and  really  appear  to  be  nothing 
but  quaint  frolics  of  hysterical  subjects  or 
of  mediums  indulging  their  sense  of  hu- 
mour. The  manifestations  of  the  Polter- 
geist are  fairly  numerous  and  the  reader 
will  find  several  instances  in  the  Proceedings 
and  especially  in  the  Journal  of  the  S.  P.  R. 

As  for  communications  with  the  dead,  I 
devoted  a  whole  chapter  to  these  in  my 

32 


The  Unknown  Guest 

essay  entitled  Our  Eternity  and  will  not 
return  to  them  now.  It  will  be  enough  to 
recall  and  recapitulate  my  general  impres- 
sion, that  probably  the  dead  did  not  enter 
into  any  of  these  conversations.  We  are 
here  concerned  with  purely  mediumistic 
phenomena,  more  curious  and  more  subtle 
than  those  of  table-rapping,  but  of  the  same 
character;  and  these  manifestations,  how- 
ever astonishing  they  may  be,  do  not  pierce 
the  terrestrial  sphere  wherein  we  are  im- 
prisoned. 


Setting  aside  the  religious  hypotheses, 
which  we  are  not  examining  here,  for  they 
belong  to  a  different  order  of  ideas, ^  we 
find,  as  an  explanation  of  the  majority  of 

^On  the  same  grounds,  we  will  also  leave  on  one 
side  the  theosophical  hypothesis,  which,  like  the  others, 
begins  by  calling  for  an  act  of  adherence,  of  blind 
faith.  Its  explanations,  though  often  ingenious,  are  no 
more  than  forcible  but  gratuitous  asseverations  and, 
as  I  said  in  Our  Eternity,  do  not  give  us  the  shadow 
of  the  commencement  of  a   proof. 

Z2 


The  Unknown  Guest 

these  phenomena,  or  at  least  as  a  means  of 
avoiding  an  absolute  and  depressing  silence 
in  regard  to  them,  two  hypotheses  which 
reach  the  unknown  by  more  or  less  diverg- 
ent paths,  to  wit,  the  spiritualistic  hypothe- 
sis and  the  mediumistic  hypothesis.  The 
spiritualists,  or  rather  the  neospiritualists 
or  scientific  spiritualists,  who  must  not  be 
confused  with  the  somewhat  over-credulous 
disciples  of  Allan  Kardec,  maintain  that 
the  dead  do  not  die  entirely,  that  their  spir- 
itual or  animistic  entity  neither  departs  nor 
disperses  into  space  after  the  dissolution  of 
the  body,  but  continues  an  active  though 
invisible  existence  around  us.  The  neospir- 
itualistic  theory,  however,  professes  only 
very  vague  notions  as  to  the  life  led  by 
these  discarnate  spirits.  Are  they  more  in- 
telligent than  they  were  when  they  inhabited 
their  flesh  ?  Do  they  possess  a  wider  under- 
standing and  mightier  faculties  than  ours? 
Up  to  the  present,  we  have  not  the  unim- 

34 


The  Unknown  Guest 

peachable  facts  that  would  permit  us  to  say 
so.  It  would  seem,  on  the  contrary,  If  the 
discarnate  spirits  really  continue  to  exist, 
that  their  life  is  circumscribed,  frail,  pre- 
carious, incoherent  and,  above  all,  not  very 
long.  To  this  the  objection  is  raised  that 
it  only  appears  so  to  our  feeble  eyes.  The 
dead  among  whom  we  move  without  know- 
ing It  struggle  to  make  themselves  under- 
stood, to  manifest  themselves,  but  dash 
themselves  against  the  impenetrable  wall  of 
our  senses,  which,  created  solely  to  perceive 
matter,  remain  hopelessly  ignorant  of  all 
the  rest,  though  this  is  doubtless  the  essen- 
tial part  of  the  universe.  That  which  will 
survive  In  us,  imprisoned  in  our  body,  is 
absolutely  inaccessible  to  that  which  sur- 
vives in  them.  The  utmost  that  they  can 
do  is  occasionally  to  cause  a  few  glimmers 
of  their  existence  to  penetrate  the  fissures  of 
those  singular  organisms  known  as  me- 
diums.    But  these  vagrant,  fleeting,  ven- 

35 


The  Unknown  Guest 

turous,  stifled,  deformed  glimmers  can  but 
give  us  a  ludicrous  idea  of  a  life  which 
has  no  longer  anything  in  common  with  the 
life — purely  animal  for  the  most  part — 
which  we  lead  on  this  earth.  It  is  possible; 
and  there  is  something  to  be  said  for  the 
theory.  It  is  at  any  rate  remarkable  that 
certain  communications,  certain  manifesta- 
tions have  shaken  the  scepticism  of  the  cold- 
est and  most  dispassionate  men  of  science, 
men  utterly  hostile  to  supernatural  influ- 
ences. In  order  to  some  extent  to  under- 
stand their  uneasiness  and  their  astonish- 
ment, we  need  only  read — to  quote  but  one 
Instance  among  a  thousand — a  disquieting 
but  unassailable  article,  entitled,  Dans  les 
regions  inexplorees  de  la  hiologie  humaine. 
Observations  et  experiences  stir  Eusapia 
Paladino,  by  Professor  Bottazzi,  Director 
of  the  Physiological  Institute  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Naples.^     Seldom  have  experi- 

^Annales  des  sciences   psychiques:    April-November 
1907.  36 


The  Unknown  Guest 

ments  in  the  domain  of  mediums  or  spirits 
been  conducted  with  more  distrustful  sus- 
picion or  with  more  implacable  scientific 
strictness.  Nevertheless,  scattered  limbs, 
pale,  diaphanous  but  capable  hands,  sud- 
denly appeared  in  the  little  physiological 
laboratory  of  Naples  University,  with  its 
doors  heavily  padlocked  and  sealed,  as  it 
were,  mathematically  excluding  any  possibil- 
ity of  fraud;  these  same  hands  worked  ap- 
paratus specially  intended  to  register  their 
touches;  lastly,  the  outline  of  something 
black,  of  a  head,  uprose  between  the  cur- 
tains of  the  mediumistic  cabinet,  remained 
visible  for  several  seconds  and  did  not  re- 
tire until  itself  apparently  frightened  by  the 
exclamations  of  surprise  drawn  from  a 
group  of  scientists  who,  after  all,  were  pre- 
pared for  anything;  and  Professor  Bot- 
tazzi  confesses  that  it  was  then  that,  to 
quote  his  own  words — measured  words, 
as  beseems   a   votary  of  science,   but   ex- 


The  Unknown  Guest 

presslve — he  felt  "a  shiver  all  through  his 
body." 

It  was  one  of  those  moments  in  which  a 
doubt  which  one  had  thought  for  ever 
abolished  grips  the  most  unbelieving.  For 
the  first  time,  perhaps,  he  looked  around 
him  with  uncertainty  and  wondered  in  what 
world  he  was.  As  for  the  faithful  ad- 
herents of  the  unknown,  who  had  long 
understood  that  we  must  resign  ourselves 
to  understanding  nothing  and  be  prepared 
for  every  sort  of  surprise,  there  was  here, 
all  the  same,  even  for  them,  a  mystery  of 
another  character,  a  bewildering  mystery, 
the  only  really  strange  mystery,  more  tor- 
turing than  all  the  others  together,  because 
it  verges  upon  ancestral  fears  and  touches 
the  most  sensitive  point  of  our  destiny. 


The  spiritualistic  argument  most  worthy 
of  attention  is  that  supplied  by  the  appari- 

38 


The  Unknown  Guest 

tlons  of  the  dead  and  by  haunted  houses. 
We  will  take  no  account  of  the  phantasms 
that  precede,  accompany  or  follow  hard 
upon  death:  they  are  explained  by  the 
transmission  of  a  violent  emotion  from  one 
subconsciousness  to  another;  and,  even 
when  they  are  not  manifested  until  several 
days  after  death,  it  may  still  be  contended 
that  they  are  delayed  telepathic  communi- 
cations. But  what  are  we  to  say  of  the 
ghosts  that  spring  up  more  than  a  year, 
nay,  more  than  ten  years  after  the  disap- 
pearance of  the  corpse?  They  are  very 
rare,  I  know,  but  after  all  there  are  some 
that  are  extremely  difficult  to  deny,  for  the 
accounts  of  their  actions  are  attested  and 
corroborated  by  numerous  and  trustworthy 
witnesses.  It  is  true  that  here  again, 
where  it  is  in  most  cases  a  question  of  ap- 
paritions to  relations  or  friends,  we  may  be 
told  that  we  are  in  the  presence  of  tele- 
pathic incidents  or  of  hallucinations  of  the 

39 


The  Unknown  Guest 

memory.  We  thus  deprive  the  spiritualists 
of  a  new  and  considerable  province  of  their 
realm.  Nevertheless,  they  retain  certain 
private  demesnes  into  which  our  telepathic 
explanations  do  not  penetrate  so  easily. 
There  have  in  fact  been  ghosts  that  showed 
themselves  to  people  who  had  never  known 
or  seen  them  in  the  flesh.  They  are  more 
or  less  closely  connected  with  the  ghosts  in 
haunted  houses,  to  which  we  must  revert 
for  a  moment. 

As  I  said  above,  it  is  almost  impossible 
honestly  to  deny  the  existence  of  these 
houses.  Here  again  the  telepathic  inter- 
pretation enforces  itself  in  the  majority  of 
cases.  We  may  even  allow  it  a  strange  but 
justifiable  extension,  for  its  limits  are 
scarcely  known.  It  has  happened  fairly 
often,  for  instance,  that  ghosts  come  to  dis- 
turb a  dwelling  whose  occupiers  find,  in 
response  to  their  indications,  bones  hidden 

in  the  walls  or  under  the  floors.     It  is  even 

40 


The  Unknown  Guest 

possible,  as  in  the  case  of  William  Moir/ 
which  was  as  strictly  conducted  and  super- 
vised as  a  judicial  enquiry,  that  the  skeleton 
Is  buried  at  some  distance  from  the  house 
and  dates  more  than  forty  years  back. 
When  the  remains  are  removed  and  de- 
cently interred,  the  apparitions  cease. 

But  even  in  the  case  of  William  Moir 
there  is  no  sufficient  reason  for  abandoning 
the  telepathic  theory.  The  medium,  the 
"sensitive,"  as  the  English  say,  feels  the 
presence  or  the  proximity  of  the  bones; 
some  relation  established  between  them  and 
him — a  relation  which  certainly  is  pro- 
foundly mysterious — makes  him  experience 
the  last  emotion  of  the  deceased  and  some- 
times allows  him  to  conjure  up  the  picture 
and  the  circumstances  of  the  suicide  or 
murder,  even  as,  in  telepathy  between  liv- 
ing persons,  the  contact  of  an  inanimate 
object  is  able  to  bring  him  into  direct  rela- 

^Proceedings,  vol.  vi.,  pp.  35-4i- 
41 


The  Unknown  Guest 

tion  with  the  subconsciousness  of  Its  owner. 
The  slender  chain  connecting  Hfe  and  death 
is  not  yet  entirely  broken;  and  we  might 
even  go  so  far  as  to  say  that  everything 
is  still  happening  within  our  world. 

But  are  there  cases  in  which  every  link, 
however  thin,  however  subtle  we  may  deem 
it,  is  definitely  shattered?  Who  would 
venture  to  maintain  this?  We  are  only 
beginning  to  suspect  the  elasticity,  the  flexi- 
bility, the  complexity  of  those  invisible 
threads  which  bind  together  objects, 
thoughts,  lives,  emotions,  all  that  is  on  this 
earth  and  even  that  which  does  not  yet 
exist  to  that  which  exists  no  longer.  Let 
us  take  an  instance  in  the  first  volume  of 
the  Proceedings:  Mr.  X.  Z.,  who  was 
known  to  most  of  the  members  of  the  Com- 
mittee on  Haunted  Houses,  and  whose  evi- 
dence was  above  suspicion,  went  to  reside 
in  a  large  old  house,  part  of  which  was 
occupied  by  his    friend    Mr.   G — .      Mr. 

42 


The  Unknown  Guest 

X.  Z.  knew  nothing  of  the  history  of  the 
place  except  that  two  servants  of  Mr.  G — 's 
had  given  him  notice  on  account  of  strange 
noises  which  they  had  heard.  One  night — 
it  was  the  22nd  of  September — Mr.  X.  Z., 
on  his  way  up  to  his  bedroom  in  the  dark, 
saw  the  whole  passage  filled  with  a  dazzling 
and  uncanny  light,  and  in  this  strange  light 
he  saw  the  figure  of  an  old  man  in  a  flow- 
ered dressing-gown.  As  he  looked,  both 
figure  and  light  vanished  and  he  was  left 
in  pitch  darkness.  The  next  day,  remem- 
bering the  tales  told  by  the  two  servants, 
he  made  enquiries  in  the  village.  At  first 
he  could  find  out  nothing,  but  finally  an  old 
lawyer  told  him  that  he  had  heard  that  the 
grandfather  of  the  present  owner  of  the 
house  had  strangled  his  wife  and  then  cut 
his  own  throat  on  the  very  spot  where  Mr. 
X.  Z.  had  seen  the  apparition.  He  was 
unable  to  give  the  exact  date  of  this  double 
event;  but  Mr.  X.  Z.  consulted  the  parish 

43 


The  Unknown  Guest 

register  and  found  that  it  had  taken  place 
on  a  22nd  of  September. 

On  the  22nd  of  September  of  the  fol- 
lowing year,  a  friend  of  Mr.  G — 's  arrived 
to  make  a  short  stay.  The  morning  after 
his  arrival,  he  came  down,  pale  and  tired, 
and  announced  his  intention  of  leaving  im- 
mediately. On  being  questioned,  he  con- 
fessed that  he  was  afraid,  that  he  had  been 
kept  awake  all  night  by  the  sound  of  groans, 
blasphemous  oaths  and  cries  of  despair, 
that  his  bedroom  door  had  been  opened, 
and  so  forth. 

Three  years  afterwards,  Mr.  X.  Z.  had 
occasion  to  call  on  the  landlord  of  the 
house,  who  lived  in  London,  and  saw  over 
the  mantelpiece  a  picture  which  bore  a  strik- 
ing resemblance  to  the  figure  which  he  had 
seen  in  the  passage.  He  pointed  it  out  to 
his  friend  Mr.  G — ,  saying: 

"That  is  the  man  whom  I  saw." 

The  landlord,  in  reply  to  their  questions, 

44 


The  Unknown  Guest 

said  that  the  painting  was  a  portrait  of  his 
grandfather,  adding  that  he  had  been  "no 
credit  to  the  family." 

Evidently,  this  does  not  in  any  way  prove 
the  existence  of  ghosts  or  the  survival  of 
man.  It  is  quite  possible  that,  in  spite  of 
Mr.  X.  Z.'s  undoubted  good  faith,  imagina- 
tion played  a  subtle  but  powerful  part  in 
these  marvels.  Perhaps  it  was  set  going  by 
the  stories  of  the  two  servants,  insignificant 
gossip  to  which  no  attention  was  paid  at  the 
time,  but  which  probably  found  its  way 
down  into  the  weird  and  fertile  depths  of 
the  subconsciousness.  The  image  was  next 
transmitted  by  suggestion  to  the  visitor 
frightened  by  a  sleepless  night.  As  for  the 
recognition  of  the  portrait,  this  is  either 
the  weakest  or  the  most  impressive  part  of 
the  story,  according  to  the  theory  that  is 
being  defended. 

It  is  none  the  less  certain  that  there  is 
some  unfairness  in  suggesting  this  explana- 

45 


The  Unknown  Guest 

tion  for  every  incident  of  the  kind.  It 
means  stretching  to  the  uttermost  and  per- 
haps stretching  too  far  the  elastic  powers  of 
that  amiable  maid-of-all-work,  telepathy. 
For  that  matter,  there  are  cases  in  which 
the  telepathic  interpretation  is  even  more 
uncertain,  as  in  that  described  by  Miss 
R.  C.  Morton  in  vol.  viii.  of  the 
Proceedings. 

The  story  is  too  long  and  complicated  to 
be  reproduced  here.  It  is  unnecessary  to 
observe  that,  in  view  of  the  character  of 
Miss  Morton,  a  lady  of  scientific  training, 
and  of  the  quality  of  the  corroborative  tes- 
timony, the  facts  themselves  seem  incon- 
testable. 

The  case  is  that  of  a  house  built  in  i860, 
whose  first  occupier  was  an  Anglo-Indian, 
the  next  tenant  being  an  old  man  and  the 
house  then  remaining  unlet  for  four  years. 
In  1882,  when  Captain  Morton  and  his 
family  moved  in,  there  had  never,  so  far 

46 


The  Unknown  Guest 

as  they  knew,  been  any  question  of  Its  being 
haunted.  Three  months  afterwards,  Miss 
Morton  was  in  her  room  and  on  the  point  of 
getting  into  bed,  when  she  heard  some  one 
at  the  door  and  went  to  it,  thinking  that  It 
might  be  her  mother.  On  opening  the  door, 
she  found  no  one  there,  but,  going  a  few 
steps  along  the  passage,  she  saw  a  tall  lady, 
dressed  in  black,  standing  at  the  head  of  the 
stairs.  She  did  not  wish  to  make  the  others 
uneasy  and  mentioned  the  occurrence  to  no 
one  except  a  friend,  who  did  not  live  In  the 
neighbourhood. 

But  soon  the  same  figure  dressed  In  black 
was  seen  by  the  various  members  of  the 
household,  by  a  married  sister  on  a  visit  to 
the  house,  by  the  father,  by  the  other 
sisters,  by  a  little  boy,  by  a  neighbour, 
General  A — ,  who  saw  a  lady  crying  In  the 
orchard  and,  thinking  that  one  of  the 
daughters  of  the  house  was  ill,  sent  to  en- 
quire after  her.     Even  the  Mortons'  two 

47 


The  Unknown  Guest 

dogs   on  more  than  one  occasion   clearly 
showed  that  they  saw  the  phantom. 

It  was,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  very  harmless : 
It  said  nothing;  it  wanted  nothing;  it  wan- 
dered from  room  to  room,  without  any  ap- 
parent object;  and,  when  it  was  spoken  to, 
it  did  not  answer  and  only  made  its  escape. 
The  household  became  accustomed  to  the 
apparition;  it  troubled  nobody  and  inspired 
no  terror.  It  was  immaterial,  it  could  not 
be  touched,  but  yet  it  intercepted  the  light. 
After  making  enquiries,  they  succeeded  in 
identifying  it  as  the  second  wife  of  the 
Anglo-Indian.  The  Morton  family  had 
never  seen  the  lady,  but,  from  the  description 
which  they  gave  of  the  phantom  to  those 
who  had  known  her,  it  appeared  that  the 
likeness  was  unmistakable.  For  the  rest, 
they  did  not  know  why  she  came  back  to 
haunt  a  house  in  which  she  had  not  died. 
After  1887,  the  appearances  became  less  fre- 
quent, distinct,  ceasing  altogether  in  1889. 

48 


The  Unknown  Guest 

5 
Let  us  assume  that  the  facts  as  reported 

in  the  Proceedings  are  certain  and  indis- 
putable. We  have  very  nearly  the  ideal 
case,  free  from  previous  or  ambient  sugges- 
tion. If  we  refuse  to  believe  in  the  exist- 
ence of  ghosts,  if  we  are  absolutely  posi- 
tive that  the  dead  do  not  survive  their 
death,  then  we  must  admit  that  the  hal- 
lucination took  birth  spontaneously  in  the 
imagination  of  Miss  Morton,  an  uncon- 
scious medium,  and  was  subsequently  trans- 
mitted by  telepathy  to  all  those  around  her. 
In  my  opinion,  this  explanation,  however 
arbitrary  and  severe  it  may  be,  is  the  one 
which  it  behoves  us  to  accept,  pending 
further  proofs.  But  it  must  be  confessed 
that,  in  thus  extending  our  incredulity,  we 
render  it  very  difficult  for  the  dead  to  make 
their  existence  known. 

We  possess  a  certain  number  of  cases  of 
this    kind,    rigorously    investigated,    cases 

49 


The  Unknown  Guest 

probably  representing  but  an  infinitesimal 
part  of  those  which  might  be  collected.  Is 
it  possible  that  they  one  and  all  elude  the 
telepathic  explanation?  It  would  be  neces- 
sary to  make  a  study  of  them,  conducted 
with  the  most  scrupulous  and  unremitting 
attention;  for  the  question  is  not  devoid  of 
interest.  If  the  existence  of  ghosts  were 
well-established,  it  would  mean  the  entrance 
into  this  world,  which  we  believe  to  be  our 
world,  of  a  new  force  that  would  explain 
more  than  one  thing  which  we  are  still  far 
from  understanding.  If  the  dead  interfere 
at  one  point,  there  is  no  reason  why  they 
should  not  interfere  at  every  other  point. 
We  should  no  longer  be  alone,  among  our- 
selves, in  our  hermetically-closed  sphere,  as 
we  are  perhaps  only  too  ready  to  imagine 
it.  We  should  have  to  alter  more  than 
one  of  our  physical  and  moral  laws,  more 
than  one  of  our  ideas;  and  it  would  no 
doubt  be  the  most  important  and  the  most 

50 


The  Unknown  Guest 

extraordinary  revelation  that  would  be  ex- 
pected in  the  present  state  of  our  knowl- 
edge and  since  the  disappearance  of  the 
old  positive  religions.  But  we  are  not 
there  yet:  the  proof  of  all  this  is  still  in 
the  nursery-stage;  and  I  do  not  know  if 
it  will  ever  get  beyond  that.  Nevertheless 
the  fact  remains  that,  in  these  impenetrable 
regions  of  mystery  which  we  are  now  ex- 
ploring, the  one  weak  spot  lies  here,  the 
one  wall  in  which  there  seems  to  be  a  chink 
— a  strange  one  enough — giving  a  glimpse 
into  the  other  world.  It  is  narrow  and 
vague  and  behind  it  there  is  still  darkness; 
but  it  is  not  without  significance  and  we 
shall  do  well  not  to  lose  sight  of  it, 

6 

Let  us  observe  that  this  survival  of  the 
dead,  as  the  neospiritualists  conceive  it, 
seems  much  less  improbable  since  we  have 
been  studying  more  closely  the  manifesta- 

51 


The  Unknown  Guest 

tions  of  the  extraordinary  and  Incontestable 
spiritual  force  that  lies  hidden  within  our- 
selves. It  is  not  dependent  on  our  thought, 
nor  on  our  consciousness,  nor  on  our  will; 
and  very  possibly  it  is  not  dependent 
either  on  our  life.  While  we  are  still 
breathing  on  this  earth,  it  is  already  sur- 
mounting most  of  the  great  obstacles  that 
limit  and  paralyse  our  existence.  It  acts  at 
a  distance  and  so  to  speak  without  organs. 
It  passes  through  matter,  disaggregates  it 
and  reconstitutes  it.  It  seems  to  possess 
the  gift  of  ubiquity.  It  is  not  subject  to 
the  laws  of  gravity  and  lifts  weights  out  of 
all  proportion  with  the  real  and  measur- 
able strength  of  the  body  whence  it  is  be- 
lieved to  emanate.  It  releases  and  removes 
itself  from  that  body;  it  comes  and  goes 
freely  and  takes  to  itself  substances  and 
shapes  which  it  borrows  all  around  it;  and 
therefore  it  Is  no  longer  so  strange  to  see 
it  surviving  for  a  time  that  body  to  which 

52 


The  Unknown  Guest 

it   does  not   appear   to  be   as   indissolubly 
bound  as  is  our  conscious  existence.     Is  it 
necessary  to   add  that  this  survival   of   a 
part  of  ourselves  which  we  hardly  know 
and  which  besides  seems  incomplete,  inco- 
herent  and   ephemeral   is   wholly   without 
prejudice  to  our  fate  in  the  eternity  of  the 
worlds?     But  this  is  a  question  which  we 
are  not  called  upon  to  study  here. 
I  shall  perhaps  be  asked: 
"If  it  is  becoming  increasingly  difficult 
for  all  these  facts — and  there  are  more  of 
them  accumulating  every  day — to  be  em- 
braced  in   the   telepathic   or  psychometric 
theory,  why  not  frankly  accept  the  spiritual- 
istic   explanation,    which    is    the    simplest, 
which  has  an   answer  for  everything  and 
which  is  gradually  encroaching  on  all  the 
others?" 

That  is  true:  it  is  the  simplest  theory, 
perhaps  too  simple;  and,  like  the  religious 
theory,  it  dispenses  us  from  all  effort  or 

53 


The  Unknown  Guest 

seeking.  We  have  nothing  to  set  against 
it  but  the  mediumistic  theory,  which  doubt- 
less does  not  account  exactly  for  a  good 
many  things,  but  which  at  least  is  on  the 
same  side  of  the  hill  of  life  as  ourselves 
and  remains  among  us,  upon  our  earth, 
within  reach  of  our  eyes,  our  hands,  our 
thoughts  and  our  researches.  There  was 
a  time  when  lightning,  epidemics  and  earth- 
quakes were  attributed  without  distinction 
to  the  wrath  of  Heaven.  Nowadays,  when 
we  are  more  or  less  familiar  with  the  source 
of  the  great  infectious  diseases,  the  hand 
of  Providence  knows  them  no  more;  and, 
though  we  are  still  ignorant  of  the  nature 
of  electricity  and  the  laws  that  regulate 
seismic  shocks,  we  no  longer  dream,  while 
waiting  to  learn  more  about  them,  of  look- 
ing for  their  causes  in  the  judgment  or 
anger  of  an  imaginary  Being.  Let  us  act 
likewise  in  the  present  case.  It  behoves 
us  above  all  to  avoid  those  rash  explana- 

54 


The  Unknown  Guest 

tions  which,  in  their  haste,  leave  by  the 
roadside  a  host  of  things  that  appear  to 
be  unknown  or  unknowable  only  because 
the  necessary  effort  has  not  yet  been  made 
to  know  them.  After  all,  while  we  must 
not  eliminate  the  spiritualistic  theory, 
neither  must  we  content  ourselves  with  it. 
It  is  even  preferable  not  to  linger  over  it 
until  it  has  supplied  us  with  decisive  argu- 
ments, for  it  is  the  duty  of  this  theory  which 
sweeps  us  roughly  out  of  our  sphere  to 
furnish  us  with  such  arguments.  For  the 
present,  it  simply  relegates  to  posthumous 
regions  phenomena  that  appear  to  occur 
within  ourselves;  it  adds  superfluous  mys- 
tery and  needless  difficulty  to  the  medium- 
istic  mystery  whence  it  springs.  If  we  were 
concerned  with  facts  that  had  no  footing  in 
this  world,  we  should  certainly  have  to  turn 
our  eyes  in  another  direction;  but  we  see  a 
large  number  of  actions  performed  which 
are  of  the  same  nature  as  those  attributed 

55 


The  Unknown  Guest 

to  the  spirits  and  equally  inexplicable,  ac- 
tions with  which,  however,  we  know  that 
they  have  nothing  to  do.  When  It  is 
proved  that  the  dead  exercise  some  Inter- 
vention, we  will  bow  before  the  fact  as  will- 
ingly as  we  bow  before  the  mediumistic 
mysteries :  It  is  a  question  of  order,  of  in- 
ternal policy  and  of  scientific  method  much 
more  than  of  probability,  preference  or 
fear.  The  hour  has  not  yet  come  to  aban- 
don the  principle  which  I  have  formulated 
elsewhere  with  respect  to  our  communica- 
tions with  the  dead,  namely,  that  It  is  natu- 
ral that  we  should  remain  at  home,  in  our 
own  world,  as  long  as  we  can,  as  long  as 
we  are  not  violently  driven  from  it  by  a 
series  of  irresistible  and  incontrovertible 
proofs  coming  from  the  neighbouring  abyss. 
The  survival  of  a  spirit  is  no  more  Improb- 
able than  the  prodigious  faculties  which  we 
are  obliged  to  attribute  to  the  mediums  If 
we  deny  them  to  the  dead.     But  the  exist- 

S6 


The  Unknown  Guest 

ence  of  mediums  Is  beyond  dispute,  whereas 
that  of  spirits  is  not;  and  It  Is  therefore 
for  the  spirits  or  for  those  who  make  use 
of  their  name  to  begin  by  proving  that  they 
exist.  Before  turning  towards  the  mystery 
beyond  the  grave,  let  us  first  exhaust  the 
possibilities  of  the  mystery  here  on  earth. 


57 


CHAPTER    II 

PSYCHOMETRY 


CHAPTER    II 

PSYCHOMETRY 
I 

NOW  that  we  have  eliminated  the  gods 
and  the  dead,  what  have  we  left? 
Ourselves  and  all  the  life  around  us;  and 
that  is  perhaps  enough.  It  is,  at  any  rate, 
much  more  than  we  are  able  to  grasp. 

Let  us  now  study  certain  manifestations 
that  are  absolutely  similar  to  those  which 
we  attribute  to  the  spirits  and  quite  as  sur- 
prising. As  for  these  manifestations,  there 
is  not  the  least  doubt  of  their  origin.  They 
do  not  come  from  the  other  world ;  they  are 
born  and  die  upon  this  earth;  and  they  arise 
solely  and  incontestably  from  our  own  ac- 
tual living  mystery.  They  are,  moreover, 
of  all  psychic  manifestations,  those  which 
are  easiest  to  examine  and  verify,  seeing 

6i 


The  Unknown  Guest 

that  they  can  be  repeated  almost  indefinitely 
and  that  a  number  of  excellent  and  well- 
known  mediums  are  always  ready  to  repro- 
duce them  in  the  presence  of  any  one  inter- 
ested in  the  question.  It  is  no  longer  a 
case  of  uncertain  and  casual  observation, 
but  of  scientific  experiment. 

The  manifestations  in  question  are  so 
many  phenomena  of  intuition,  of  clairvoy- 
ance or  clalraudience,  of  seeing  at  a  dis- 
tance and  even  of  seeing  the  future.  These 
phenomena  may  either  be  due  to  pure,  spon- 
taneous intuition  on  the  part  of  the  medium, 
in  an  hypnotic  or  waking  state,  or  else  pro- 
duced or  facilitated  by  one  of  the  various 
empirical  methods  which  apparently  serve 
only  to  arouse  the  medium's  subconscious 
faculties  and  to  release  in  some  way  his 
subliminal  clairvoyance.  Among  such 
methods,  those  most  often  employed  are, 
as  we  all  know,  cards,  coffee-grounds,  pins, 
the  lines  of  the  hand,  crystal  globes,  astrol- 

62 


The  Unknown  Guest 

ogy,  and  so  on.  They  possess  no  impor- 
tance in  themselv^es,  no  intrinsic  virtue,  and 
are  worth  exactly  what  the  medium  who 
uses  them  is  worth.  As  M.  Duchatel  well 
says: 

"In  reality,  there  is  only  one  solitary 
mancy.  The  faculty  of  seeing  in  time,  like 
the  faculty  of  seeing  in  space,  is  one,  what- 
ever its  outward  form  or  the  process  em- 
ployed." 

We  will  not  linger  now  over  those  mani- 
festations which,  under  appearances  that 
are  sometimes  childish  and  vulgar,  often 
conceal  surprising  and  Incontestable  truths, 
but  will  devote  the  present  chapter  ex- 
clusively to  a  series  of  phenomena  which 
Includes  almost  all  the  others  and  which  has 
been  classed  under  the  generic  and  rather 
Ill-chosen  and  Ill-constructed  title  of  "psy- 
chometry."  Psychometry,  to  borrow  Dr. 
Maxwell's  excellent  definition.  Is  "the  fac- 

63 


The  Unknown  Guest 

ulty  possessed  by  certain  persons  of  placing 
themselves  in  relation,  either  spontaneously 
or,  for  the  most  part,  through  the  inter- 
mediary of  some  object,  with  unknown  and 
often  very  distant  things  and  people." 

The  existence  of  this  faculty  is  no  longer 
seriously  denied;  and  it  is  easy  for  any  one 
who  cares  to  do  so  to  verify  it  for  himself; 
for  the  mediums  who  possess  it  are  not  ex- 
tremely rare,  nor  are  they  inaccessible.  It 
has  formed  the  subject  of  a  number  of  ex- 
periments (see,  among  others,  M.  Warcol- 
lier's  report  in  the  Annales  des  sciences 
psychiqiies  of  July,  191 1)  and  of  a  few 
treatises,  in  the  front  rank  of  which  I  would 
mention  M.  Duchatel's  Enquete  sur  des  cas 
de  psychometrie  and  Dr.  Osty's  recently 
published  book,  Liicidite  et  intuition^  which 
is  the  fullest,  most  profound  and  most  con- 
scientious work  that  we  possess  on  the  mat- 
ter up  to  the  present.  Nevertheless  it  may 
be  said  that  these  regions  quite  lately  an- 

64 


The  Unknown  Guest 

nexed  by  metapsychlcal  science  are  as  yet 
hardly  explored  and  that  fruitful  surprises 
are  doubtless  awaiting  earnest  seekers. 


The  faculty  in  question  is  one  of  the 
strangest  faculties  of  our  subconsciousness 
and  beyond  a  doubt  contains  the  key  to 
most  of  the  manifestations  that  seem  to  pro- 
ceed from  another  world.  Let  us  begin 
by  seeing,  with  the  aid  of  a  living  and  typ- 
ical example,  how  it  Is  exercised. 

Mme.  M ,  one  of  the  best  mediums 

mentioned  by  Dr.  Osty,  Is  given  an  object 
which  belonged  to  or  which  has  been 
touched  and  handled  by  a  person  about 
whom  it  is  proposed  to  question  her.    Mme. 

M operates  in  a  state  of  trance;  but 

there  are  other  noted  psychometers,  such  as 

Mme.  F and  M.  Ph.  M.  de  F , 

who  retain  all  their  normal  consciousness, 
so  that  hypnotism  or  the  somnambulistic 

65 


The  Unknown  Guest 

state  is  in  no  way  indispensable  to  the 
awakening  of  this  extraordinary  faculty  of 
clairvoyance. 

When  the  object,  which  is  usually  a  let- 
ter, has  been  handed  to  Mme.  M ,  she 

is  asked  to  place  herself  In  communication 
with  the  writer  of  the  letter  or  the  owner 

of  the  object.     Forthwith,  Mme.  M 

not  only  sees  the  person  in  question,  his 
physical  appearance,  his  character,  his 
habits,  his  interests,  his  state  of  health,  but 
also,  in  a  series  of  rapid  and  changing  vi- 
sions that  follow  upon  one  another  like 
cinematograph  pictures,  perceives  and  de- 
scribes exactly  his  immediate  surroundings, 
the  scenery  outside  his  window,  the  rooms 
In  which  he  lives,  the  people  who  live  with 
him  and  who  wish  him  well  or  ill,  the  psy- 
chology and  the  most  secret  and  unexpected 
intentions  of  all  those  who  figure  in  his 
existence.  If,  by  means  of  your  questions, 
you  direct  her  towards  the  past,  she  traces 

66 


The  Unknown  Guest 

the  whole  course  of  the  subject's  history. 
If  you  turn  her  towards  the  future,  she 
seems  often  to  discover  it  as  clearly  as  the 
past.  But  we  will  for  the  moment  reserve 
this  latter  point,  to  which  we  shall  return 
later  in  a  chapter  devoted  to  the  knowledge 
of  the  future. 

3 

In  the  presence  of  these  phenomena,  the 

first  thought  that  naturally  occurs  to  the 
mind  is  that  we  are  once  more  concerned 
with  that  astonishing  and  involuntary  com- 
munication between  one  subconsciousness 
and  another  which  has  been  invested  with 
the  name  of  telepathy.  And  there  is  no  de- 
nying that  telepathy  plays  a  great  part  in 
these  intuitions.  However,  to  explain  their 
working,  nothing  is  equal  to  an  example 
based  upon  a  personal  experience.  Here  is 
one  which  is  in  no  way  remarkable,  but 
which  plainly  shows  the  normal  course  of 

the  operation. 

67 


The  Unknown  Guest 

In    September,    19 13,    while    I    was   at 
Elberfeld,  visiting  Krall's  horses,  my  wife 

went  to  consult  Mme.  M ,  gave  her  a 

scrap  of  writing  in  my  hand — a  note  dis- 
patched previous  to  my  journey  and  con- 
taining no  allusion  to  it — and  asked  her 
where  I  was  and  what  I  was  doing.  With- 
out  a  second's   hesitation,   Mme.    M 

declared  that  I  was  very  far  away,  in  a 
foreign  country  where  they  spoke  a  lan- 
guage which  she  did  not  understand.  She 
saw  first  a  paved  yard,  shaded  by  a  big 
tree,  with  a  building  on  the  left  and  a 
garden  at  the  back:  a  rough  but  not  inapt 
description  of  Krall's  stables,  which  my 
wife  did  not  know  and  which  I  myself  had 
not  seen  at  the  time  when  I  wrote  the  note. 
She  next  perceived  me  in  the  midst  of  the 
horses,  examining  them,  studying  them  with 
an  absorbed,  anxious  and  tired  air.  This 
was  true,  for  I  found  those  visits,  which 
overwhelmed  me  with  a  sense  of  the  marvel- 

68 


The  Unknown  Guest 

lous  and  kept  my  attention  on  the  rack, 
singularly  exhausting  and  bewildering.  My 
wife  asked  her  if  I  intended  to  buy  the 
horses.     She  replied: 

"Not  at  all;  he  is  not  thinking  of  it." 

And,  seeking  her  words  as  though  to 
express  an  unaccustomed  and  obscure 
thought,  she  added: 

"I  don't  know  why  he  is  so  much  in- 
terested; it  is  not  like  him.  He  has  no 
particular  passion  for  horses.  He  has 
some  lofty  idea  which  I  can't  quite  dis- 
cover. ..." 

She  made  two  rather  curious  mistakes  in 
this  experiment.  The  first  was  that,  at  the 
time  when  she  saw  me  in  Krall's  stable- 
yard,  I  was  no  longer  there.  She  had  re- 
ceived her  vision  just  in  the  interval  of  a 
few  hours  between  two  visits.  Experience 
shows,  however,  that  this  is  a  usual  error 
among  psychometers.  They  do  not,  prop- 
erly speaking,  see  the  action  at  the  very  mo- 

69 


The  Unknown  Guest 

ment  of  Its  performance,  but  rather  the 
customary  and  familiar  action,  the  princi- 
pal thing  that  preoccupies  either  the  person 
about  whom  they  are  being  consulted  or  the 
person  consulting  them.  They  frequently 
go  astray  in  time.  There  is  not,  therefore, 
necessarily  any  simultaneity  between  the  ac- 
tion and  the  vision;  and  it  is  well  never  to 
take  their  statements  in  this  respect  lit- 
erally. 

The  other  mistake  referred  to  our  dress : 
Krall  and  I  were  in  ordinary  town  clothes, 
whereas  she  saw  us  in  those  long  coats 
which  stable-lads  wear  when  grooming  their 
horses. 

Let  us  now  make  every  allowance  for  my 

wife's  unconscious  suggestions :  she  knew 

that  I  was  at  Elberfeld  and  that  I  should 

be  in  the  midst  of  the  horses;  and  she  knew 

or  could  easily  conjecture  my  state  of  mind. 

The  transmission  of  thought  is  remarkable; 

but  this  is  a  recognized  phenomenon  and 

70 


The  Unknown  Guest 

one  of  frequent  occurrence  and  we  need  not 
therefore  linger  over  it. 

The  real  mystery  begins  with  the  descrip- 
tion of  a  place  which  my  wife  had  never 
seen  and  which  I  had  not  seen  either  at  the 
time  of  writing  the  note  which  established 
the  psychometrical  communication.  Are  we 
to  believe  that  the  appearance  of  what  I 
was  one  day  to  see  was  already  inscribed  on 
that  prophetic  sheet  of  paper,  or  more 
simply  and  more  probably  that  the  paper 
which  represented  myself  was  enough  to 
transmit  either  to  my  wife's  subconscious- 
ness or  to  Mme.   M ,  whom   at  that 

time  I  had  never  met,  an  exact  picture  of 
what  my  eyes  beheld  three  or  four  hundred 
miles  away?  But,  although  this  description 
is  exceedingly  accurate — paved  yard,  big 
tree,  building  on  the  left,  garden  at  the 
back — is  it  not  too  general  for  all  idea  of 
chance  coincidence  to  be  eliminated?  Per- 
haps, by  Insisting  further,  greater  precision 

71 


The  Unknown  Guest 

might  have  been  obtained;  but  this  Is  not 
certain,  for  as  a  rule  the  pictures  follow 
upon  one  another  so  swiftly  in  the  medium's 
vision  that  he  has  no  time  to  perceive  the 
details.  When  all  is  said,  experiences  of 
this  kind  do  not  enable  us  to  go  beyond 
the  telepathic  explanation.  But  here  Is  a 
different  one,  in  which  subconscious  sugges- 
tion cannot  play  any  part  whatever. 

Some  days  after  the  experiment  which 
I  have  related,  I  received  from  England  a 
request  for  my  autograph.  Unlike  most  of 
those  which  assail  an  author  of  any  celeb- 
rity, it  was  charming  and  unaffected;  but  it 
told  me  nothing  about  Its  writer.  Without 
even  noticing  from  what  town  It  was  sent 
to  me,  after  showing  it  to  my  wife,  I  re- 
placed It  In   its   envelope   and  took  It  to 

Mme.  M .   She  began  by  describing  us, 

my  wife  and  myself,  who  both  of  us  had 
touched  the  paper  and  consequently  im- 
pregnated it  with  our  respective  "fluids." 

72 


The  Unknown  Guest 

I  asked  her  to  pass  beyond  us  and  come  to 
the  writer  of  the  note.  She  then  saw  a 
girl  of  fifteen  or  sixteen,  almost  a  child, 
who  had  been  in  rather  indifferent  health, 
but  who  was  now  very  well  indeed.  The 
girl  was  In  a  beautiful  garden.  In  front  of 
a  large  and  luxurious  house  standing  in 
the  midst  of  rather  hilly  country.  She 
was  playing  with  a  big,  curly-haired, 
long-eared  dog.  Through  the  branches 
of  the  trees  one  caught  a  glimpse  of  the 
sea. 

On  enquiry,  all  the  details  were  found  to 
be  astonishingly  accurate;  but,  as  usual, 
there  was  a  mistake  In  the  time,  that  Is  to 
say,  the  girl  and  her  dog  were  not  In  the 
garden  at  the  Instant  when  the  medium  saw 
them  there.  Here  again  an  habitual  action 
had  obscured  a  casual  movement;  for,  as 
I  have  already  said,  the  vision  very 
rarely  corresponds  with  the  momentary 
reality. 

72, 


The  Unknown  Guest 

4 

There  is  nothing  exceptional  In  the  above 
example;  I  selected  it  from  among  many 
others  because  it  is  simple  and  clear.  Be- 
sides, this  kind  of  experience  is  already,  so 
to  speak,  classical,  or  at  least  should  be  so, 
were  it  not  that  everything  relating  to  the 
manifestations  of  our  subconsciousness  is 
always  received  with  extraordinary  sus- 
picion. In  any  case,  I  cannot  too  often  re- 
peat that  the  experiment  is  within  every- 
body's reach;  and  it  rarely  fails  to  achieve 
absolute  success  with  capable  psychometers, 
who  are  pretty  well  known  and  whom  it  is 
open  to  any  one  to  consult. 

Let  us  add  that  it  can  be  extended  much 
further.  If,  for  instance,  I  had  acted  as  I 
did  in  similar  cases  and  asked  the  medium 
questions  about  the  young  girl's  home- 
circle,  about  the  character  of  her  father,  the 
health  of  her  mother,  the  tastes  and  habits 
of  her  brothers  and  sisters,  she  would  have 

74 


The  Unknown  Guest 

answered  with  the  same  certainty,  the  same 
precision  as  one  might  do  who  was  not  only 
a  close  acquaintance  of  the  girl's,  but  en- 
dowed with  much  more  penetrating  facul- 
ties of  intuition  than  a  normal  observer.  In 
short,  she  would  have  felt  and  expressed  all 
that  this  girl's  subconsciousness  would  have 
felt  with  regard  to  the  persons  mentioned. 
But  it  must  be  admitted  that,  as  we  are 
here  no  longer  speaking  of  facts  that  are 
easily  verified,  confirmation  becomes  in- 
finitely more  difficult. 

There  could  be  no  question,  in  the  cir- 
cumstances, of  transmission  of  thought, 
since  both  the  medium  and  I  were  ignorant 
of  everything.  Besides,  other  experiments, 
easily  devised  and  repeated  and  more  rigor- 
ously controlled,  do  away  with  that  theory 
entirely.  For  instance,  I  took  three  letters 
written  by  intimate  friends,  put  each  of 
them  in  a  double  envelope  and  gave  them 
to  a  messenger  unacquainted  with  the  con- 

75 


The  Unknown  Guest 

tents  of  the  envelopes  and  also  with  the 
persons    in    question    to    take    to    Mme. 
M .    On  arriving  at  the  house,  the  mes- 
senger handed  the  clairvoyant  one  of  the 
letters,  selected  at  random,  and  did  nothing 
further  beyond    putting   the    indispensable 
questions,  likewise  at  random,  and  taking 
down  the  medium's  replies  in  shorthand. 
Mme.  M began  by  giving  a  very  strik- 
ing physical  portrait  of  the  lady  who  had 
written  the  letter;  followed  this  up  with  an 
absolutely  faithful  description  of  her  char- 
acter, her  habits,  her  tastes,  her  intellectual 
and  moral  qualities;  and  ended  by  adding 
a  few  details  concerning  her  private  life, 
of  which  I  myself  was  entirely  unaware  and 
of    which     I    obtained    the    confirmation 
shortly      afterwards.        The      experiment 
yielded  just  as  remarkable  results  when  con- 
tinued with  the  two  other  letters. 

In  the  face  of  this  mystery,  two  explana- 
tions may  be  offered,  both  equally  perplex- 

76 


The  Unknown  Guest 

ing.  On  the  one  hand,  we  shall  have  to 
admit  that  the  sheet  of  paper  handed  to 
the  psychometer  and  Impregnated  with  hu- 
man "fluid"  contains,  after  the  manner  of 
some  prodigiously  compressed  gas,  all  the 
Incessantly  renewed,  incessantly  recurring 
images  that  surround  a  person,  all  his  past 
and  perhaps  his  future,  his  psychology,  his 
state  of  health,  his  wishes,  his  intentions, 
often  unknown  to  himself,  his  most  secret 
Instincts,  his  likes  and  dislikes,  all  that  is 
bathed  in  light  and  all  that  is  plunged  in 
darkness,  his  whole  life,  in  short,  and  more 
than  his  personal  and  conscious  life,  besides 
all  the  lives  and  all  the  influences,  good  or 
bad,  latent  or  manifest,  of  all  who  approach 
him.  We  should  have  here  a  mystery  as 
unfathomable  and  at  least  as  vast  as  that  of 
generation,  which  transmits.  In  an  infinitesi- 
mal particle,  the  mind  and  matter,  with  all 
the  qualities  and  all  the  faults,  all  the  ac- 
quirements and  all  the  history,  of  a  series 

11 


The  Unknown  Guest 

of    lives     of    which    none    can    tell    the 
number. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  we  do  not  admit 
that  so  much  energy  can  lie  concealed  in  a 
sheet  of  paper,  continuing  to  exist  and  de- 
velop indefinitely  there,  we  must  necessarily 
suppose  that  an  inconceivable  network  of 
nameless  forces  is  perpetually  radiating 
from  this  same  paper,  forces  which,  cleav- 
ing time  and  space,  detect  instantaneously, 
anywhere  and  at  any  distance,  the  life  that 
gave  them  life  and  place  themselves  in  com- 
plete communication,  body  and  soul,  senses 
and  thoughts,  past  and  future,  conscious- 
ness and  subconsciousness,  with  an  existence 
lost  amid  the  innumerous  host  of  men  who 
people  this  earth.  It  is,  indeed,  exactly 
what  happens  in  the  experiments  with  me- 
diums in  automatic  speech  or  writing,  who 
believe  themselves  to  be  inspired  by  the 
dead.  Yet,  here  it  is  no  longer  a  discarnate 
spirit,  but  an  object  of  any  kind  imbued 

78 


The  Unknown  Guest 

with  a  hving  "fluid"  that  works  the 
miracle;  and  this,  we  may  remark  in  pass- 
ing, deals  a  severe  blow  to  the  spiritualistic 
theory. 

Nevertheless,  there  are  two  rather  seri- 
ous objections  to  this  second  explanation. 
Granting  that  the  object  really  places  the 
medium  in  communication  with  an  unknown 
entity  discovered  in  space,  how  comes  It 
that  the  Image  or  the  spectacle  created  by 
that  communication  hardly  ever  corre- 
sponds with  the  reality  at  the  actual  mo- 
ment? On  the  other  hand,  it  is  indisputable 
that  the  psychometer's  clairvoyance,  his 
gift  of  seeing  at  a  distance  the  pictures  and 
scenes  surrounding  an  unknown  being.  Is 
exercised  with  the  same  certainty  and  the 
same  power  when  the  object  that  sets  his 
strange  faculty  at  work  has  been  touched  by 
a  person  who  has  been  dead  for  years.  Are 
we,  then,  to  admit  that  there  is  an  actual, 
living  communication  with  a  human  being 

79 


The  Unknown  Guest 

who  is  no  more,  who  sometimes — as,  for 
instance,  in  a  case  of  incineration — has  left 
no  trace  of  himself  on  earth.  In  short,  with 
a  dead  man  who  continues  to  live  at  the 
place  and  at  the  moment  at  which  he  im- 
pregnated the  object  with  his  "fluid"  and 
who  seems  to  be  unaware  that  he  Is  dead? 
But  these  objections  are  perhaps  less 
serious  than  one  might  believe.  To  begin 
with,  there  are  seers,  so-called  "tele- 
psychics,"  who  are  not  psychometers,  that 
Is  to  say,  they  are  able  to  communicate  with 
an  unknown  and  distant  person  without  the 
Intermediary  of  an  object;  and  In  these 
seers,  as  in  the  psychometers,  the  vision  very 
rarely  corresponds  with  the  actual  facts  of 
the  moment :  they  too  perceive  above  all 
the  general  impression,  the  usual  and  char- 
acteristic actions.  Next,  as  regards  com- 
munications with  a  person  long  since  dead, 
we  are  confronted  with  one  of  two  things : 
either  confirmation  will  be  almost  Impos- 

80 


The  Unknown  Guest 

sible  when  It  concerns  revelations  on  the 
subject  of  the  dead  man's  private  deeds  and 
actions,  which  are  unknown  to  any  living 
person;  or  else  communication  will  be  es- 
tablished not  with  the  deceased,  but  with 
the  living  person,  who  necessarily  knows 
the  facts  which  he  is  called  upon  to  confirm. 
As  Dr.  Osty  very  rightly  says : 

"The  conditions  are  then  those  of  per- 
ception by  the  intermediary  of  the  thoughts 
of  a  living  person;  and  the  deceased  is  per- 
ceived through  a  mental  representation. 
The  experiment,  for  this  reason,  is  value- 
less as  evidence  of  the  reality  of  retrospec- 
tive psychometry  and  consequently  of  the 
recording  part  played  by  the  object. 

"The  only  class  of  experiment  that 
could  be  of  value  from  this  point  of  view, 
would  be  that  In  which  confirmation  would 
come  subsequently  from  documents  whose 
contents  remained  unknown  to  any  living 

8i 


The  Unknown  Guest 

person  until  after  the  clairvoyance  sitting. 
It  might  then  be  proved  that  the  object 
can  latently  register  the  human  personali- 
ties which  have  touched  It  and  that  it  is 
sufficient  in  itself  to  allow  of  a  mental  re- 
construction of  those  personalities  through 
the  Interpretation  of  the  register  by  a  clair- 
voyant or  psychometer." 

5 

It  may  be  imagined  that  experiments  of 
this  sort,  in  which  there  is  no  crack,  no 
leak  on  the  side  of  the  living,  are  anything 
but  easy  to  carry  through.  In  the  case  of 
a  murder,  for  instance,  it  can  always  be 
maintained  that  the  medium  discovers  the 
body  and  the  circumstances  of  the  tragedy 
through  the  involuntary  and  unconscious  In- 
termediary of  the  murderer,  even  when  the 
latter  escapes  prosecution  and  suspicion 
altogether.     But  a  recent  incident,  related 

by  Dr.  Osty  with  the  utmost  precision  of 

82 


The  Unknown  Guest 

detail  and  the  most  scrupulous  verification 
in  the  Annales  des  sciences  psychiqiies  of 
April,  19 14,  perhaps  supplies  us  with  one 
of  those  experiments  which  we  have  not 
been  able  to  achieve  until  this  day.  I  give 
the  facts  in  a  few  words. 

On  the  2nd  of  Mach  of  this  year,  M. 
Etienne  Lerasle,  an  old  man  of  eighty-two, 
left  his  son's  house  at  Cours-les-Barres 
(Cher)  for  his  daily  walk  and  was  not 
seen  again.  The  house  stands  in  the  middle 
of  a  forest  on  Baron  Jaubert's  estate.  Vain 
searches  were  made  in  every  direction  for 
the  missing  man's  traces;  the  ponds  and 
pools  were  dragged  to  no  purpose ;  and  on 
the  8th  of  March  a  careful  and  systemati- 
cal exploration  of  the  wood,  in  which  no 
fewer  than  twenty-four  people  took  part, 
led  to  no  result.  At  last,  on  the  i8th  of 
March,  M.  Louis  Mirault,  Baron  Jaubert's 
agent,  thought  of  applying  to  Dr.  Osty, 
and  supplied  him  with  a  scarf  which  the 

83 


The  Unknown  Guest 

old  man  had  worn.     Dr.  Osty  went  to  his 

favourite    medium,    Mme.    M .      He 

knew  only  one  thing,  that  the  matter  con- 
cerned an  old  man  of  eighty-two,  who 
walked  with  a  slight  stoop;  and  that  was 
all. 

As  soon  as  Mme.  M had  taken  the 

scarf  in  her  hands,  she  saw  the  dead  body 
of  an  old  man  lying  on  the  damp  ground, 
in  a  wood.  In  the  middle  of  a  coppice,  be- 
side a  horse-shoe  pond,  near  a  sort  of  rock. 
She  traced  the  road  taken  by  the  victim, 
depicted  the  buildings  which  he  had  passed, 
his  mental  condition  impaired  by  age,  his 
fixed  Intention  of  dying,  his  physical  appear- 
ance, his  habitual  and  characteristic  way  of 
carrying  his  stick,  his  soft  striped  shirt, 
and  so  on. 

The  accuracy  of  the  description  caused 
the  greatest  astonishment  among  the  miss- 
ing man's  friends.  There  was  one  detail 
that  puzzled  them  a  little:  the  mention  of 

84 


The  Unknown  Guest 

a  rock  in  a  part  of  the  country  that  pos- 
sessed none.  The  search  was  resumed  on 
the  strength  of  the  data  supplied  by 
the  clairvoyant.  But  all  the  roads  in 
a  forest  are  more  or  less  alike;  the  in- 
dications were  not  enough;  and  nothing 
was  found. 

It  so  happened  that  the  second  and  third 

interviews  with  Mme.  M had  to  be 

postponed  until  the  30th  of  March  and  the 
6th  of  April  following.  At  each  of  these 
sittings,  the  details  of  the  vision  and  of  the 
road  taken  became  clearer  and  clearer  and 
were  given  with  startling  precision,  so  much 
so  that,  by  pursuing  step  by  step  the  indica- 
tions of  the  medium,  the  man's  friends 
ended  by  discovering  the  body,  dressed  as 
stated,  lying  in  the  middle  of  a  coppice,  just 
as^  described,  close  to  a  huge  stump  of  a 
tree  all  covered  with  moss,  which  might 
easily  be  mistaken  for  a  rock,  and  on  the 
edge  of  a  crescent-shaped  piece  of  water. 

85 


The  Unknown  Guest 

I  may  add  that  these  particular  indications 
applied  to  no  other  part  of  the  wood. 


I  refer  the  reader  to  Dr.  Osty's  conscien- 
tious and  exhaustive  article  for  the  numer- 
ous details  which  I  have  been  obliged  to 
omit;   but   those  which   I   have   given   are 
enough  to  show  the  character  of  this  ex- 
traordinary case.     To  begin  with,  we  have 
one  certainty  which  appears  almost  unassail- 
able, namely,  that  there  can  be  no  question 
of  a  crime.     No  one  had  the  least  interest 
in   procuring  the  old  man's   death.     The 
body  bore  no  marks  of  violence;  besides, 
the  minds  of  those  concerned  did  not  for  a 
moment  entertain  the  thought  of  an  assault. 
The  poor  man,  whose  mental  derangement 
was  known  to  all  those  about  him,  obsessed 
by  the  desire  and  thought  of  death,   had 
gone  quietly  and  obstinately  to  seek  it  in 
the  nearest  coppice.     There  was  therefore 

86 


The  Unknown  Guest 

no  criminal  in  the  case,  in  other  words, 
there  was  no  possible  or  imaginable  com- 
munication between  the  medium's  subcon- 
sciousness and  that  of  any  living  person. 
Hence  we  are  compelled  to  admit  that  the 
communication  was  established  with  the 
dead  man  or  with  his  subconsciousness, 
which  continued  to  live  for  nearly  a  month 
after  his  death  and  to  wander  around  the 
same  places;  or  else  we  must  agree  that  all 
this  coming  tragedy,  all  that  the  old  man 
was  about  to  see,  do  and  suffer  was  already 
irrevocably  contained  and  inscribed  in  the 
scarf  at  the  moment  when  he  last  wore  it. 
In  this  particular  case,  considering  that 
all  relations  with  the  living  were  definitely 
and  undeniably  severed,  I  can  see  no  other 
explanations  beyond  these  two.  They  are 
both  equally  astounding  and  land  us  sud- 
denly in  a  world  of  fable  and  enchantment 
which  we  thought  that  we  had  left  for  good 
and  all.     If  we  do  not  adopt  the  theory 

87 


The  Unknown  Guest 

of  the  tell-tale  scarf,  we  must  accept  that 
of  the  spiritualists,  who  maintain  that  the 
spirits  communicate  with  us  freely.  It  is 
possible  that  they  may  find  a  serious  argu- 
ment in  this  case.  But  a  solitary  fact  is  not 
enough  to  support  a  theory,  all  the  more 
so  as  the  one  in  question  will  never  be  abso- 
lutely safe  from  the  objection  that  could  be 
raised  if  the  case  were  one  of  murder,  which 
is  possible,  after  all,  and  cannot  be  actually 
disproved.  We  must,  therefore,  while 
awaiting  other  similar  and  more  decisive 
facts,  if  any  such  are  conceivable,  return 
to  those  which  are,  so  to  speak,  laboratory 
facts,  facts  which  are  only  denied  by  those 
who  will  not  take  the  trouble  to  verify 
them ;  and  to  interpret  these  facts  there  are 
only  the  two  theories  which  we  mentioned 
above,  before  this  digression;  for,  in  these 
cases,  which  are  unlike  those  of  automatic 
speech  or  writing,  we  have  not  as  a  rule  to 

consider  the  possibility  of  any  intervention 

88 


The  Unknown  Guest 

of  the  dead.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  best- 
known  psychometers  are  very  rarely  spir- 
itualists and  claim  no  connection  with  the 
spirits.  They  care  but  little,  as  a  rule, 
about  the  source  of  their  intuitions  and 
seem  very  little  interested  In  their  exact 
working  and  origin.  Now  it  would  be  ex- 
ceedingly surprising  if,  acting  and  speaking 
in  the  name  of  the  departed,  they  should 
be  so  consistently  ignorant  of  the  existence 
of  those  who  inspire  them;  and  more  sur- 
prising still  If  the  dead,  whom  in  other  cir- 
cumstances we  see  so  jealously  vindicating 
their  identity,  should  not  here,  when  the 
occasion  is  so  propitious,  seek  to  declare 
themselves,  to  manifest  themselves  and  to 
make  themselves  known. 

7 

Dismissing  for  the  time  being  the  inter- 
vention of  the  dead,  I  believe  then  that,  in 
most  of  the  cases  which  I  will  call  labora- 

89 


The  Unknown  Guest 

tory  cases,  because  they  can  be  reproduced 
at  will,  we  are  not  necessarily  reduced  to 
the  theory  of  the  vitalized  object  represent- 
ing wholly,  indefinitely  and  inexhaustibly, 
through  all  the  vicissitudes  of  time  and 
space,  every  one  of  those  who  have  held 
it  in  their  hands  for  a  little  while.  For  we 
must  not  forget  that,  according  to  this 
theory,  the  object  in  question  will  conceal 
and,  through  the  intermediary  of  the  me- 
dium, will  reveal  as  many  distinct  and  com- 
plete personalities  as  it  has  undergone 
contacts.  It  will  never  confuse  or  mix  those 
different  personalities.  They  will  remain 
there  in  definite  strata,  distinct  one  from 
another;  and,  as  Dr.  Osty  puts  it,  "the  me- 
dium can  interpret  each  of  them  from  be- 
ginning to  end,  as  though  he  were  in 
communication  with  the  far-off  entity." 

All  this  makes  the  theory  somewhat  in- 
credible, even  though  it  be  not  much  more 
so  than  the  many  other  phenomena  In  which 

90 


The  Unknown  Guest 

the  shock  of  the  miraculous  has  been  soft- 
ened by  familiarity.  We  can  find  more  or 
less  everywhere  in  nature  that  prodigious 
faculty  of  storing  away  inexhaustible  en- 
ergies and  ineffaceable  traces,  memories  and 
impressions  in  space.  There  is  not  a  thing 
in  this  world  that  is  lost,  that  disappears, 
that  ceases  to  be,  to  retain  and  to  propagate 
life.  Need  we  recall,  in  this  connection,  the 
incessant  emission  of  pictures  perceived  by 
the  sensitized  plate,  the  vibrations  of  sound 
that  accumulate  in  the  disks  of  the  gramo- 
phone, the  Hertzian  waves  that  lose  none 
of  their  strength  in  space,  the  mysteries  of 
reproduction  and,  in  a  word,  the  incompre- 
hensibility of  everything  around  us? 

Personally,  if  I  had  to  choose,  I  should, 
in  most  of  these  laboratory  cases,  frankly 
adopt  the  theory  that  the  object  touched 
serves   simply  to   detect,   among   the   pro- 

91 


The  Unknown  Guest 

digious  crowd  of  human  beings,   the  one 
who  impregnated  it  with  his  "fluid." 

"This  object,"  says  Dr.  Osty,  "has  no 
other  function  than  to  allow  the  medium's 
sensitiveness  to  distinguish  a  definite  force 
from  among  the  innumerable  forces  that 
assail  it." 

It  seems  more  and  more  certain  that,  as 
the  cells  of  an  immense  organism,  we  are 
connected  with  everything  that  exists  by 
an  inextricable  network  of  vibrations, 
waves,  influences,  of  nameless,  numberless 
and  uninterrupted  fluids.  Nearly  always, 
in  nearly  all  men,  everything  carried  along 
by  these  invisible  wires  falls  into  the  depths 
of  the  unconsciousness  and  passes  unper- 
ceived,  which  does  not  mean  that  it  remains 
inactive.  But  sometimes  an  exceptional  cir- 
cumstance— in  the  present  case,  the  marvel- 
lous  sensibility  of  a   first-class   medium — 

92 


The  Unknown  Guest 

suddenly  reveals  to  us,  by  the  vibrations  and 
the  undeniable  action  of  one  of  those  wires, 
the  existence  of  the  infinite  network.  I  will 
not  speak  here  of  trails  discovered  and  fol- 
lowed in  an  almost  mediumistic  manner, 
after  an  object  of  some  sort  has  been  sniffed 
at.  Such  stories,  though  highly  probable, 
as  yet  lack  adequate  support.  But,  within 
a  similar  order  of  ideas,  and  in  a  humbler 
world  and  one  with  more  modest  limits,  the 
dog,  for  instance,  is  incessantly  surrounded 
by  different  scents  and  smells  to  which  he 
-  appears  Indifferent  until  his  attention  is 
aroused  by  one  or  other  of  these  vagrant 
effluvia,  when  he  extricates  it  from  the 
hopeless  tangle.  It  would  seem  as  though 
the  trail  took  life,  vibrating  like  a  chord 
in  unison  with  the  animal's  wishes,  becom- 
ing irresistible,  and  taking  it  to  its  goal 
after  innumerable  winds  and  turns. 

We  see  the  mysterious  network  revealed 
also   in  "cross-correspondence."     Two   or 

93 


The  Unknown  Guest 

three  mediums  who  do  not  know  one  an- 
other, who  are  often  separated  by  seas  or 
continents,  who  are  ignorant  of  the  where- 
abouts of  the  one  who  is  to  complete  their 
thought,  each  write  a  part  of  a  sentence 
which,  as  it  stands,  conveys  no  meaning 
whatever.  On  piecing  the  fragments  to- 
gether, we  perceive  that  they  fit  to  perfec- 
tion and  acquire  an  intelligible  and  ob- 
viously premeditated  sense.  We  here  find 
once  more  the  same  faculty  that  permits  the 
medium  to  detect,  among  thousands  of 
others,  a  definite  force  which  was  wander- 
ing in  space.  It  is  true  that,  in  these  cases, 
the  spiritualists  maintain  that  the  whole  ex- 
periment is  organized  and  directed  by  a 
discarnate  intelligence,  independent  of  the 
mediums,  which  means  to  prove  its  existence 
and  its  identity  in  this  manner.  Without 
incontinently  rejecting  this  theory,  which  is 
not  necessarily  indefensible,  we  will  merely 
remark  that,  since  the  faculty  is  manifested 

94 


The  Unknown  Guest 

in  psychometry  without  the  intervention  of 
the  spirits,  there  can  be  no  sufficient  reason 
for  attributing  it  to  them  in  cross-corre- 
spondence. 

9 

But  in  whom  does  it  reside?     Is  it  hid- 
den in  ourselves  or  in  the  medium?     Ac- 
cording to  Dr.  Osty,  the  clairvoyants  are 
mirrors  reflecting  the  Intuitive  thought  that 
is  latent  in  each  of  us.     In  other  words,  it 
is  we  ourselves  who  are  clairvoyant,  and 
they  but  reveal  to  us  our  own  clairvoyance. 
Their  mission  is  to  stir,  to  awaken,  to  gal- 
vanize, to  illumine  the  secrets  of  our  sub- 
consciousness and  to  bring  them  to  the  sur- 
face of  our  normal  lives.     They  act  upon 
our  inner  darkness  exactly  as,  in  the  photo- 
graphic   dark-room,    the    developing-bath 
acts  upon  the  sensitized  plate.     I  am  con- 
vinced that  the  theory  is  accurate  as  re- 
gards  intuition   and   clairvoyance   proper, 

95 


The  Unknown  Guest 

that  is  to  say,  in  all  cases  where  we  are  in 
the  medium's  presence  and  more  or  less 
directly  in  touch  with  him.  But  is  it  so  in 
psychometry?  Is  it  we  who,  unknown  to 
ourselves,  know  all  that  the  object  contains, 
or  is  it  the  medium  alone  who  discovers 
it  in  the  object  itself,  independently  of  the 
person  who  produces  the  object?  When, 
for  instance,  we  receive  a  letter  from  a 
stranger,  does  this  letter,  which  has  ab- 
sorbed like  a  sponge  the  whole  life  and  by 
choice  the  subconscious  life  of  the  writer, 
disgorge  all  that  it  contained  into  our  sub- 
consciousness? Do  we  instantly  learn  all 
that  concerns  its  author,  absolutely  as 
though  he  were  standing  before  us  In  the 
flesh  and,  above  all,  with  his  soul  laid  bare, 
though  we  remain  profoundly  ignorant  of 
the  fact  that  we  have  learnt  it  until  the 
medium's  Intervention  tells  us  so? 

This,  If  you  like,  Is  simply  shifting  the 

question.     Let  It  be  the  medium  or  myself 

96 


The  Unknown  Guest 

that  discovers  the  unknown  personality  in 
the  object  or  tracks  it  across  time  and 
space:  all  that  we  do  is  to  widen  the  scope 
of  our  riddle,  while  leaving  it  no  less  ob- 
scure. Nevertheless,  there  is  some  interest 
in  knowing  whether  we  have  to  do  with  a 
general  faculty  latent  In  all  men  or  an  in- 
explicable privilege  reserved  to  rare  in- 
dividuals. The  exceptional  should  always 
be  eliminated,  if  possible,  and  not  left  to 
hang  over  the  abyss  like  an  unfinished 
bridge  leading  to  nothing.  I  am  well  aware 
that  the  compulsory  intervention  of  the  me- 
dium Implies  that,  In  spite  of  all,  we  recog- 
nize his  possession  of  abnormal  faculties; 
but  at  any  rate  we  reduce  their  power  and 
their  extent  appreciably  and  we  return 
sooner  and  more  easily  to  the  ordinary 
laws  of  the  great  human  mystery.  And  It 
is  of  Importance  that  we  should  be  ever 
coming  back  to  that  mystery  and  ever  bring- 
ing all  things  back  to  It.     But,  unfortun- 

97 


The  Unknown  Guest 

ately,  actual  experience  does  not  admit  of 
this  generalization.  It  is  clearly  a  case  of 
a  special  faculty,  one  peculiar  to  the  me-^ 
dium,  one  which  is  wholly  unknown  to  our 
latent  intuition.  We  can  easily  assure  our- 
selves of  this  by  causing  the  medium  to  re- 
ceive through  a  third  party  and  enclosed 
in  a  series  of  three  envelopes,  as  in  the  ex- 
periment described  above,  a  letter  of  which 
we  know  the  writer,  but  of  which  both  the 
source  and  the  contents  are  absolutely  un- 
known to  the  messenger.  These  unusual 
circumstances,  in  which  all  subconscious 
communications  between  consultant  and 
consulted  are  strictly  cut  off,  will  in  no  way 
hamper  the  medium's  clairvoyance;  and  we 
may  fairly  conclude  that  it  is  actually  the 
medium  himself  who  discovers  directly, 
without  an  intermediary,  without  "relays," 
to  use  M.  Duchatel's  expression,  all  that 
the  object  holds  concealed.  It,  therefore, 
seems  certain  that  there  is,  at  least  in  psy- 

98 


The  Unknown  Guest 

chometry,  something  more  than  the  mere 
mirror  of  which  Dr.  Osty  speaks. 


lO 


I  consider  it  necessary  to  declare  for  the 
last  time  that  these  psychometric  phenom- 
ena, astonishing  though  they  appear  at  first, 
are  known,  proved  and  certain  and  are  no 
longer  denied  or  doubted  by  any  of  those 
who  have  studied  them  seriously.  I  could 
have  given  full  particulars  of  a  large 
number  of  conclusive  experiments;  but  this 
seemed  to  me  as  superfluous  and  tedious 
as  would  be,  for  instance,  a  string  of  names 
of  the  recognized  chemical  reactions  that 
can  be  obtained  in  a  laboratory.  Any  one 
who  pleases  is  at  liberty  to  convince  him- 
self of  the  reality  of  the  facts,  provided  that 
he  applies  to  genuine  mediums  and  keeps 
aloof  from  the  inferior  "seers"  and  espe- 
cially the  shams  and  imposters  who  swarm 
In   this   region   more   than   in    any    other. 

99 


The  Unknown  Guest 

Even  with  the  best  of  them,  he  will  have 
to  be  careful  of  the  involuntary,  uncon- 
scious and  almost  inevitable  interference 
of  telepathy,  which  is  also  very  interesting, 
though  it  is  a  phenomenon  of  a  different 
class,  much  less  surprising  and  debatable 
than  pure  psychometry.  He  must  also  learn 
the  art  of  interrogating  the  medium  and 
refrain  from  asking  incoherent  and  random 
questions  about  casual  or  future  events.  He 
will  not  forget  that  "clairvoyance  is  strictly 
limited  to  the  perception  of  human  person- 
ality," according  to  the  rule  so  well  formu- 
lated by  Dr.  Osty.  Experiments  have  been 
made  in  which  a  psychometer,  on  touching 
the  tooth  of  a  prehistoric  animal,  saw  the 
landscapes  and  the  cataclysms  of  the 
earth's  earliest  ages  displayed  before  his 
eyes;  in  which  another  medium,  on  handling 
a  jewel,  conjured  up,  it  would  seem  with 
marvellous  exactness,  the  games  and  pro- 
cessions of  ancient  Greece,  as  though  the 

100 


The  Unknown  Guest 

objects  permanently  retained  the  recollec- 
tion or  rediscovered  the  "astral  negatives" 
of  all  the  events  which  they  once  witnessed. 
But  it  will  be  understood  that,  in  such  cases, 
any  effective  control  is,  so  to  speak,  impos- 
sible and  that  the  part  played  by  telepathy 
cannot  be  decided.  It  is  important,  there- 
fore, to  keep  strictly  to  that  which  can  be 
verified. 

Even  when  thus  limiting  his  scope,  the 
experimenter  will  meet  with  many  surprises. 
For  instance,  though  the  revelations  of  two 
psychometers  to  whom  the  same  letter  is 
handed  in  succession  most  often  agree  re- 
markably in  their  main  outlines,  It  can  also 
happen  that  one  of  them  perceives  only 
what  concerns  the  writer  of  the  letter, 
whereas  the  other  will  be  interested  only 
In  the  person  to  whom  the  letter  was  ad- 
dressed or  to  a  third  person  who  was  in 
the  room  where  the  letter  was  written.  It 
Is  well  to  be  forearmed  against  these  first 

lOI 


The  Unknown  Guest 

mistakes,  which,  for  that  matter,  in  the  fre- 
quent cases  where  strict  control  is  possible, 
but  confirm  the  existence  and  the  indepen- 
dence of  the  astounding  faculty. 

II 

As  for  the  theories  that  attempt  to  ex- 
plain it,  I  am  quite  willing  to  grant  that 
they  are  still  somewhat  confused.  The  im- 
portant thing  for  the  moment  is  the  accumu- 
lation of  cases  and  experiments  that  go  feel- 
ing their  way  farther  and  farther  along  all 
the  paths  of  the  unknown.  Meanwhile, 
that  which  we  have  already  learnt  opens 
more  than  one  unexpected  door  at  the 
back  of  our  old  convictions  and  sheds 
upon  the  life  and  habits  of  our  secret  be- 
ing suflficient  light  to  puzzle  us  for  many 
a  long  day.  This  brings  us  back  once  more 
to  the  omniscience  and  perhaps  the  omni- 
potence of  our  hidden  guest,  to  the  brink 
of  the  mysterious  reservoir  of  every  manner 

302 


The  Unknown  Guest 

of  knowledge  which  we  shall  meet  with 
again  when  we  come  to  speak  of  the  future, 
of  the  talking  horses,  of  the  divining-rod, 
of  materializations  and  miracles,  In  short, 
in  every  circumstance  where  we  pass  beyond 
the  horizon  of  our  little  daily  life.  As  we 
thus  advance,  with  slow  and  cautious  foot- 
steps, in  these  as  yet  deserted  and  very 
nebulous  regions  of  metapsychics,  we  are 
compelled  to  recognize  that  there  must 
exist  somewhere,  in  this  world  or  in  others, 
a  spot  in  which  everything  is  known,  in 
which  everything  is  possible,  to  which  every- 
thing goes,  from  which  everything  comes, 
which  belongs  to  all,  to  which  all  have 
access,  but  of  which  the  long-forgotten 
roads  must  be  learnt  again  by  our  stumbling 
feet.  We  shall  often  meet  those  difficult 
roads  in  the  course  of  our  present  quest 
and  we  shall  have  more  than  one  occasion 
to  refer  again  to  those  depths  into  which  all 

the    supernatural    facts    of    our    existence 

103 


The  Unknown  Guest 

flow,  unless  indeed  they  take  their  source 
there.     For  the  moment,  that  which  must 
above  all  engage  our  attention  in  these  psy- 
chometric phenomena  is  their  purely  and 
exclusively  human  character.     They  occur 
between  the  living  and  the  living,  on  this 
solid  earth  of  ours,  in  the  world  that  lies 
before  our  eyes;  and  the  spirits,  the  dead, 
the  gods  and  the  interplanetary  intelligences 
know  them  not.     Hardly  anywhere  else, 
except  in  the  equally  perplexing  manifesta- 
tions of  the  divining-rod  and  in  certain  ma- 
terializations, shall  we  find  with  the  same 
clearness  this  same  specific  character,  if  one 
may  call  it  so.     This  is  a  valuable  lesson. 
It  tells  us  that  our  every-day  life  provides 
phenomena  as  disturbing  and  of  exactly  the 
same  kind  and  nature  as  those  which,   in 
other  circumstances,  we  attribute  to  other 
forces  than  ours.     It  teaches  us  also  that 
we  must  first  direct  and  exhaust  our  en- 
quiries here  below,  among  ourselves,  before 

104 


The  Unknown  Guest 

passing  to  the  other  side ;  for  our  first  care 
should  be  to  simplify  the  interpretations 
and  explanations  and  not  to  seek  elsewhere, 
in  suppositions,  what  probably  lies  hidden 
within  us  In  reality.  Afterwards,  if  the  un- 
known overwhelm  us  utterly,  if  the  dark- 
ness engulf  us  beyond  all  hope,  there  will 
still  be  time  to  go,  none  can  tell  where,  to 
question  the  deities  or  the  dead. 


105 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE 


FUTURE 


CHAPTER    III 

THE  KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE 

I 

PREMONITION  or  precognition  leads 
us  to  still  more  mysterious  regions, 
where  stands,  half-emerging  from  an  intol- 
erable darkness,  the  gravest  problem  that 
can  thrill  mankind,  the  knowledge  of  the 
future.  The  latest,  the  best  and  the  most 
complete  study  devoted  to  it  is,  I  believe, 
that  recently  published  by  M.  Ernest  Boz- 
zano,  under  the  title  Des  Phenomenes  Pre- 
monitoires.  Availing  himself  of  excellent 
earlier  work,  notably  that  of  Mrs.  Sidgwick 
and  Myers^  and  adding  the  result  of  his 
own  researches,  the  author  collects  some 
thousand  cases  of  precognition,  of  which  he 
discusses  one  hundred  and  sixty,  leaving  the 

'^Proceedings,  Vols.  V.  and  XI. 

109 


The  Unknown  Guest 

great  majority  of  the  others  on  one  side, 
not  because  they  are  negligible,  but  be- 
cause he  does  not  wish  to  exceed  too  fla- 
grantly the  normal  limits  of  a  monograph. 

He  begins  by  carefully  eliminating  all 
the  episodes  which,  though  apparently  pre- 
monitory, may  be  explained  by  self-sugges- 
tion (as  in  the  case,  for  instance,  where 
some  one  smitten  with  a  disease  still  latent 
seems  to  foresee  this  disease  and  the  death 
which  will  be  its  conclusion),  by  telepathy 
(when  a  sensitive  is  aware  beforehand  of 
the  arrival  of  a  person  or  a  letter) ,  or  lastly 
by  clairvoyance  (when  a  man  dreams  of  a 
spot  where  he  will  find  something  which 
he  has  mislaid,  or  an  uncommon  plant,  or 
an  insect  sought  for  in  vain,  or  of  the  un- 
known place  which  he  will  visit  at  some 
later  date). 

In  all  these  cases,  we  have  not,  properly 

speaking,   to   do  with  a   pure   future,  but 

rather  with  a  present  that  is  not  yet  known. 

no 


The  Unknown  Guest 

Thus  reduced  and  stripped  of  all  foreign 
influences  and  intrusions,  the  number  of 
instances  in  which  there  is  a  really 
clear  and  incontestable  perception  of  a 
fragment  of  the  future  remains  large 
enough,  contrary  to  what  is  generally 
believed,  to  make  it  impossible  for  us  ' 
to  speak  of  extraordinary  accidents  or 
wonderful  coincidences.  There  must  be 
a  limit  to  everything,  even  to  distrust, 
even  to  the  most  extensive  incredulity, 
otherwise  all  historical  research  and  a 
good  deal  of  scientific  research  would  be- 
come decidedly  impracticable.  And  this  re- 
mark applies  as  much  to  the  nature  of  the 
incidents  related  as  to  the  actual  authen- 
ticity of  the  narratives.  We  can  contest  or 
suspect  any  story  whatever,  any  written 
proof,  any  evidence;  but  thenceforward  we 
must  abandon  all  certainty  or  knowledge 
that  Is  not  acquired  by  means  of  mathe- 
matical   operations    or   laboratory   experl- 

III 


The  Unknown  Guest 

ments,  that  is  -to  say,  three-fourths  of  the 
human     phenomena     which     interest     us 
most.     Observe  that  the  records  collected 
by    the    investigators    of    the    S.    P.    R., 
like    those     discussed    by     M.     Bozzano, 
are     all     told     at     first     hand     and    that 
those  stories  of  which  the  narrators  were 
not  the  protagonists  or  the  direct  witnesses 
have    been    ruthlessly    rejected.      Further- 
more, some  of  these  narratives  are  neces- 
sarily of  the  nature  of  medical  observations; 
as  for  the  others,  if  we  attentively  exam- 
ine the  character  of  those  who  have  re- 
lated  them   and   the   circumstances   which 
corroborate  them,  we  shall  agree  that  it  is 
more  just  and  more  reasonable  to  believe 
m  them  than  to  look  upon  every  man  who 
has  an  extraordinary  experience  as  being  a 
priori  a  liar,  the  victim  of  an  hallucina^ 
tion,  or  a  wag. 

2 

There  could  be  no  question  of  giving 

112 


The  Unknown  Guest 

here  even  a  brief  analysis  of  the  most  strik- 
ing cases.  It  would  require  a  hundred 
pages  and  would  alter  the  whole  nature  of 
this  essay,  which,  to  keep  within  its  proper 
dimensions,  must  take  it  for  granted  that 
most  of  the  materials  which  it  examines 
are  familiar.  I  therefore  refer  the  reader 
who  may  wish  to  form  an  opinion  for  him- 
self to  the  easily-accessible  sources  which  I 
have  mentioned  above.  It  will  suffice,  to 
give  an  accurate  idea  of  the  gravity  of  the 
problem  to  any  one  who  has  not  time  or 
opportunity  to  consult  the  original  docu- 
ments if  I  sum  up  in  a  few  words  some  of 
these  pioneer  adventures,  selected  among 
those  which  seem  least  open  to  dispute;  for 
it  goes  without  saying  that  all  have  not  the 
same  value,  otherwise  the  question  would  be 
settled.  There  are  some  which,  while  ex- 
ceedingly striking  at  first  sight  and  offer- 
ing every  guarantee  that  could  be  desired 
as  to  authenticity,  nevertheless  do  not  imply 

1 1.3 


The  Unknown  Guest 

a  real  knowledge  of  the  future  and  can  be 
interpreted  in  another  manner,  I  give  one, 
to  serve  as  an  instance;  it  is  reported  by  Dr. 
Alphonse  Teste  in  his  Manuel  pratique  du 
magnetisme  animal. 

On  the  8th  of  May,  Dr.  Teste  mag- 
netizes Mme.  Hortense  in  the 

presence  of  her  husband.  She  is  no  sooner 
asleep  than  she  announces  that  she  has  been 
pregnant  for  a  fortnight,  that  she  will  not 
go  her  full  time,  that  "she  will  take  fright 
at  something,"  that  she  will  have  a  fall  and 
that  the  result  will  be  a  miscarriage.  She 
adds  that,  on  the  12th  of  May,  after  hav- 
ing had  a  fright,  she  will  have  a  fainting-fit 
which  will  last  for  eight  minutes;  and  she 
then  describes,  hour  by  hour,  the  course  of 
her  malady,  which  will  end  in  three  days' 
loss  of  reason,  from  which  she  will  recover. 

On  awaking,  she  retains  no  recollection 

of  anything  that  has  passed;  it  is  kept  from 

her;  and  Dr.  Teste  communicates  his  notes 

114 


The  Unknown  Guest 

to  Dr.  Amedee  Latour.     On  the  12th  of 

May,  he  calls  on  M.  and  Mme. , 

finds     them    at     table     and     puts     Mme. 

to  sleep  again,  whereupon  she 

repeats  word  for  word  what  she  told  him 
four  days  before.  They  wake  her  up.  The 
dangerous  hour  is  drawing  near.  They 
take  every  imaginable  precaution  and  even 

close  the  shutters.    Mme. ,  made 

uneasy  by  these  extraordinary  measures 
which  she  is  quite  unable  to  understand, 
asks  what  they  are  going  to  do  to  her. 
Half-past    three    o'clock    strikes.      Mme. 

rises  from  the  sofa  on  which  they 

have  made  her  sit  and  wants  to  leave  the 
room.  The  doctor  and  her  husband  try  to 
prevent  her. 

"But  what  is  the  matter  with  you?"  she 
asks.     "I  simply  must  go  out." 

"No,  madame,  you  shall  not:  I  speak  in 
the  interest  of  your  health." 

"Well,  then,  doctor,"  she  replies,  with 

115 


The  Unknown  Guest 

a  smile,  "if  it  is  in  the  interest  of  my  health, 
that  is  all  the  more  reason  why  you  should 
let  me  go  out," 

The  excuse  is  a  plausible  one  and  even 
irresistible;  but  the  husband,  wishing  to 
carry  the  struggle  against  destiny  to  the 
last,  declares  that  he  will  accompany  his 
wife.  The  doctor  remains  alone,  feeling 
somewhat  anxious,  in  spite  of  the  rather 
farcical  turn  which  the  incident  has  taken. 
Suddenly,  a  piercing  shriek  is  heard  and  the 
noise  of  a  body  falling.     He  runs  out  and 

finds  Mme. wild  with  fright  and 

apparently  dying  in  her  husband's  arms.  At 
the  moment  when,  leaving  him  for  an  in- 
stant, she  opened  the  door  of  the  place 
where  she  was  going,  a  rat,  the  first  seen 
there  for  twenty  years,  rushed  at  her  and 
gave  her  so  great  a  start  that  she  fell  flat 
on  her  back.  And  all  the  rest  of  the  pre- 
diction was  fulfilled  to  the  letter,  hour  by 
hour  and  detail  by  detail. 

ii6 


The  Unknown  Guest 

3 

To  make  it  quite  clear  in  what  spirit  I 

am  undertaking  this  study  and  to  remove 
at  the  beginning  any  suspicion  of  blind  or 
systematic  credulity,  I  am  anxious,  before 
going  any  further,  to  say  that  I  fully  realize 
that  cases  of  this  kind  by  no  means  carry 
conviction.  It  is  quite  possible  that  every- 
thing happened  in  the  subconscious  imagi- 
nation of  the  subject  and  that  she  herself 
created,  by  self-suggestion,  her  illness,  her 
fright,  her  fall  and  her  miscarriage  and 
adapted  herself  to  most  of  the  circum- 
stances which  she  had  foretold  in  her  sec- 
ondary state.  The  appearance  of  the  rat 
at  the  fatal  moment  is  the  only  thing  that 
would  suggest  a  precise  and  disquieting 
vision  of  an  inevitable  future  event.  Unfor- 
tunately, we  are  not  told  that  the  rat  was 
perceived  by  other  witnesses  than  the  pa- 
tient, so  that  there  is  nothing  to  prove  that 
it  also  was  not  imaginary.     I  have  there- 

117 


The  Unknown  Guest 

fore  quoted  this  inadequate  instance  only 
because  it  represents  fairly  well  the  general 
aspect  and  the  indecisive  value  of  many 
similar  cases  and  enables  us  to  note  once 
and  for  all  the  objections  which  can  be 
raised  and  the  precautions  which  we  should 
take  before  entering  these  suspicious  and 
obscure  regions. 

We  now  come  to  an  infinitely  more  sig- 
nificant and  less  questionable  case  related 
by  Dr.  Joseph  Maxwell,  the  learned  and 
very  scrupulous  author  of  Les  Phenomhtes 
psychiques,  a  work  which  has  been  trans- 
lated into  English  under  the  title  of  Meta- 
psychical  Phenomena.  It  concerns  a  vision 
which  was  described  to  him  eight  days  be- 
fore the  event  and  which  he  told  to  many 
people  before  it  was  accomplished.  A 
sensitive  perceived  in  a  crystal  the  follow- 
ing scene:  a  large  steamer,  flying  a  flag  of 
three  horizontal  bars,  black,  white  and  red, 

and  bearing   the   name  Leutschland,   was 

ii8 


The  Unknown  Guest 

sailing  in  mid-ocean.  The  boat  was  sud- 
denly enveloped  in  smoke;  a  great  number 
of  sailors,  passengers  and  men  in  uniform 
rushed  to  the  upper  deck ;  and  the  boat  went 
down. 

Eight  days  afterwards,  the  newspapers 
announced  the  accident  to  the  Deutschland, 
whose  boiler  had  burst,  obliging  the  steam- 
boat to  stand  to. 

The  evidence  of  a  man  like  Dr.  Max- 
well, especially  when  we  have  to  do  with  a 
so-to-speak  personal  incident,  possesses  an 
importance  on  which  it  is  needless  to  insist. 
We  have  here,  therefore,  several  days  be- 
forehand, the  very  clear  prevision  of  an 
event  which,  moreover,  in  no  way  concerns 
the  percipient :  a  curious  detail,  but  one 
which  is  not  uncommon  in  these  cases. 
The  mistake  in  reading  Leiitschland  for 
Deutschland^  which  would  have  been  quite 
natural  in  real  life,  adds  a  note  of  probabil- 
ity  and   authenticity   to  the   phenomenon. 

119 


The  Unknown  Guest 

As  for  the  final  act,  the  foundering  of  the 
vessel  In  the  place  of  a  simple  heaving  to, 
we  must  see  In  this,  as  Dr.  J.  W.  Pickering 
and  W.  A.  Sadgrove  suggest,  "the  sub- 
conscious dramatization  of  a  subliminal  in- 
ference of  the  percipient."  Such  drama- 
tizations, moreover,  are  instinctive  and  al- 
most general  In  this  class  of  visions. 

If  this  were  an  isolated  case,  it  would 
certainly  not  be  right  to  attach  decisive  Im- 
portance to  it;  "but,"  Dr.  Maxwell  ob- 
serves, "the  same  sensitive  has  given  me 
other  curious  instances;  and  these  cases, 
compared  with  others  which  I  myself  have 
observed  or  with  those  of  which  I  have  re- 
ceived first-hand  accounts,  render  the 
hypothesis  of  coincidence  very  improbable, 
though  they  do  not  absolutely  exclude  it."^ 

4 

Another  and  perhaps   more   convincing 

case,  more  strictly  investigated  and  estab- 

-Maxwell:    Metapsychical  Phenomena,  p.  202. 

120 


The  Unknown  Guest 

llshed,  a  case  which  clearly  does  not  admit 
of  explanation,  by  the  theory  of  coincidence, 
worthy  of  all  respect  though  this  theory  be, 
is  that  related  by  M.  Theodore  Flournoy, 
science  professor  at  the  university  of 
Geneva,  in  his  remarkable  work,  Esprits  et 
Mediums.  Professor  Flournoy  is  known 
to  be  one  of  the  most  learned  and  most 
critical  exponents  of  the  new  science  of 
metapsychics.  He  even  carries  his  fond- 
ness for  natural  explanations  and  his  re- 
pugnance to  admit  the  Intervention  of  su- 
perhuman powers  to  a  point  where  It  Is 
often  difficult  to  follow  him.  I  will  give 
the  narrative  as  briefly  as  possible.  It  will 
be  found  In  full  on  pp.  348  to  362  of  his 
masterly  book. 

In  August,  1883,  a  certain  Mme. 
Buscarlet,  whom  he  knew  personally,  re- 
turned to  Geneva  after  spending  three 
years  with  the  Moratlef  family  at  Kazan 
as  governess  to  two  girls.     She  continued 

121 


The  Unknown  Guest 

to  correspond  with  the  family  and  also  with 
a  Mme.  Nitchinof,  who  kept  a  school  at 
Kazan  to  which  Miles.  Moratief,  Mme. 
Buscarlet's  former  pupils,  went  after  her 
departure. 

On  the  night  of  the  9th  of  December 
(O.  S.)  of  the  same  year,  Mme.  Buscarlet 
had  a  dream  which  she  described  the  fol- 
lowing morning  in  a  letter  to  Mme.  Mora- 
tief, dated  10  December.  She  wrote,  to 
quote  her  own  words : 

"You  and  I  were  on  a  country-road  when 
a  carriage  passed  in  front  of  us  and  a  voice 
from  inside  called  to  us.  When  we  came 
up  to  the  carriage,  we  saw  Mile.  Olga 
Popoi  lying  across  it,  clothed  in  white, 
wearing  a  bonnet  trimmed  with  yellow  rib- 
bons.    She  said  to  you : 

"  *I  called  you  to  tell  you  that  Mme. 
Nitchinof  will  leave  the  school  on  the 
17th.' 

"The  carriage  then  drove  on." 

122 


The  Unknown  Guest 

A  week  later  and  three  days  before  the 
letter  reached  Kazan,  the  event  foreseen  in 
the  dream  was  fulfilled  in  a  tragic  fashion. 
Mme.  Nitchinof  died  on  the  i6th  of  an 
infectious  disease;  and  on  the  17th  her 
body  was  carried  out  of  the  school  for  fear 
of  infection. 

It  is  well  to  add  that  both  Mme.  Buscar- 
let's  letter  and  the  replies  which  came  from 
Russia  were  communicated  to  Professor 
Flournoy  and  bear  the  postmark  dates. 

Such  premonitory  dreams  are  frequent; 
but  it  does  not  often  happen  that  circum- 
stances and  especially  the  existence  of  a 
document  dated  previous  to  their  fulfilment 
give  them  such  incontestable  authenticity. 

We  may  remark  in  passing  the  odd  char- 
acter of  this  premonition,  which  however 
is  fully  In  accordance  with  the  habits  of  our 
unknown  guest.  The  date  is  fixed  pre- 
cisely; but  only  a  veiled  and  mysterious  al- 
lusion (the  woman  lying  across  the  carriage 

123 


The  Unknown  Guest 

and  cloaked  in  white)  is  made  to  the  essen- 
tial part  of  the  prediction,  the  illness  and 
death. 

Was  there  a  coincidence,  a  vision  of  the 
future  pure  and  simple,  or  a  vision  of  the 
future  suggested  by  telepathic  influence? 
The  theory  of  coincidence  can  be  defended, 
if  need  be,  here  as  everywhere  else,  but 
would  be  very  extraordinary  in  this  case. 
As  for  telepathic  influence,  we  should  have 
to  suppose  that,  on  the  9th  of  December, 
a  week  before  her  death,  Mme.  Nitchinof 
had  in  her  subconsciousness  a  presentiment 
of  her  end  and  that  she  transmitted  this  pre- 
sentiment across  some  thousands  of  miles, 
from  Kazan  to  Geneva,  to  a  person  with 
whom  she  had  never  been  intimate.  It  is 
very  complex,  but  possible,  for  telepathy 
often  has  these  disconcerting  ways.  If  this 
were  so,  the  case  which  would  be  one  of 
latent  illness  or  even  of  self-suggestion; 
and  the  preexistence  of  the  future,  without 

124 


The  Unknown  Guest 

being   entirely    disproved,    would   be   less 
clearly  established. 

5 

Let  us  pass  to  other  examples.  I  quote 
from  an  excellent  article  on  the  importance 
of  precognitions,  by  Messrs.  Pickering  and 
Sadgrove,  which  appeared  in  the  Annates 
des  sciences  psychiques  for  i  February 
1908,  the  summary  of  an  experiment  by 
Mrs.  A.  W.  Verrall  told  in  full  detail  in 
Vol.  XX  of  the  Proceedings.  Mrs.  Ver- 
rall is  a  celebrated  "automatist" ;  and  her 
"cross-correspondences"  occupy  a  whole 
volume  of  the  Proceedings.  Her  good 
faith,  her  sincerity,  her  fairness  and  her  sci- 
entific precision  are  above  suspicion;  and 
she  is  one  of  the  most  active  and  respected 
members  of  the  Society  for  Psychical 
Research. 

On  the  nth  of  May,  1901,  at  11. 10 
P.M.,  Mrs.  Verrall  wrote  as  follows: 

125 


The  Unknown  Guest 

"Do  not  hurry         date  this         hoc  est 

quod  volul — tandem.  diKaioavvt}  Koi  xapd 
Gvix(j)Govsi  (JvvsTotffcv.  A.  W.  V.  Kai  aXXcj) 
riv'i  iffcoi.  calx  pedibus  inhaerens  difficulta- 
tem  superavit.  magnopere  adiuvas  per- 
sectando  semper.  Nomen  inscribere  iam 
possum — sic,  en  tibi  !"^ 

After  the  writing  comes  a  humorous 
drawing  representing  a  bird  walking. 

That  same  night,  as  there  were  said  to  be 
"uncanny  happenings"  in  some  rooms  near 
the  London  Law  Courts,  the  watchers  ar- 
ranged to  sit  through  the  night  in  the  empty 
rooms.  Precautions  were  taken  to  prevent 
intrusion  and  powdered  chalk  was  spread 
on  the  floor  of  the  two  smaller  rooms,  "to 

^Xenoglossy  is  well  known  not  to  be  unusual  in 
automatic  writing;  sometimes  even  the  "automatist" 
speaks  or  writes  languages  of  which  he  is  completely 
ignorant.  The  Latin  and  Greek  passages  are  trans- 
lated as  follows: 

"This  is  what  I  have  wanted,  at  last.  Justice  and 
joy  speak  a  word  to  the  wise.  A.  W.  V.  and  perhaps 
some  one  else.  Chalk  sticking  to  the  feet  has  got 
over  the  difficulty.  You  help  greatly  by  always  per- 
severing.    Now  I  cau  write  a  name — thus,  here  it  is!" 

126 


The  Unknown  Guest 

trace  anybody  or  anything  that  might  come 
or  go."  Mrs.  Verrall  knew  nothing  of  the 
matter.  The  phenomena  began  at  12.43 
A.M.  and  ended  at  2.9  A.M.  The  watchers 
noticed  marks  on  the  powdered  chalk.  On 
examination  it  was  seen  that  the  marks  were 
"clearly  defined  bird's  footprints  in  the 
middle  of  the  floor,  three  in  the  left-hand 
room  and  five  in  the  right-hand  room." 
The  marks  were  identical  and  exactly  2^ 
inches  in  width;  they  might  be  compared 
to  the  footprints  of  a  bird  about  the  size 
of  a  turkey.  The  footprints  were  observed 
at  2.30  A.  M. ;  the  unexplained  phenomena 
had  begun  at  12.43  ^^at  same  morning. 
The  words  about  "chalk  sticking  to  the 
feet"  are  a  singularly  appropriate  comment 
on  the  events;  but  the  remarkable  point  is 
that  Mrs.  Verrall  wrote  what  we  have  said 
one  hour  and  thirty-three  minutes  before 
the  events  took  place. 

The  persons  who  watched  in  the  two 

127 


The  Unknown  Guest 

rooms  were  questioned  by  Mr.  J.  G.  Pid- 

dlngton,  a  member  of  the  council  of  the 
S.  P.  R.,  and  declared  that  they  had  not 
any  expectation  of  what  they  discovered. 

I  need  hardly  add  that  Mrs.  Verrall  had 
never  heard  anything  about  the  happenings 
in  the  haunted  house  and  that  the  watchers 
were  completely  ignorant  of  Mrs.  Verrall's 
existence. 

Here  then  is  a  very  curious  prediction 
of  an  event,  insignificant  In  itself,  which  is 
to  happen,  in  a  house  unknown  to  the  one 
who  foretells  It,  to  people  whom  she  does 
not  know  either.  The  spiritualists,  who 
score  in  this  case,  not  without  some  reason, 
will  have  It  that  a  spirit,  in  order  to 
prove  its  existence  and  its  intelligence, 
organized  this  little  scene  in  which  the  fu- 
ture, the  present  and  the  past  are  all  mixed 
up  together.  Are  they  right?  Or  is  Mrs. 
Verrall's  subconsciousness  roaming  like 
this,  at  random,  in  the  future?    It  is  certain 

128 


The  Unknown  Guest 

that  the  problem  has  seldom  appeared  un- 
der a  more  baffling  aspect. 


We  will  now  take  another  premonitory 
dream,  strictly  controlled  by  the  committee 
of  the  S.  P.  R.^  Early  in  September,  1893, 
Annette,  wife  of  Walter  Jones,  tobacconist, 
of  Old  Gravel  Lane,  East  London,  had  her 
little  boy  ill.  One  night  she  dreamt  that 
she  saw  a  cart  drive  up  and  stop  near  where 
she  was.  It  contained  three  coffins,  "two 
white  and  one  blue.  One  white  coffin  was 
bigger  than  the  other;  and  the  blue  was  the 
biggest  of  the  three."  The  driver  took  out 
the  bigger  white  coffin  and  left  it  at  the 
mother's  feet,  driving  off  with  the  others. 
Mrs.  Jones  told  her  dream  to  her  husband 
and  to  a  neighbour,  laying  particular  stress 
on  the  curious  circumstance  that  one  of  the 
coffins  was  blue. 

^Proceedings,  vol.  xi.,  p.  493. 

129 


The  Unknown  Guest 

On  the  loth  of  September,  a  friend  of 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Jones  was  confined  of  a  boy, 
who  died  on  the  29th  of  the  same  month. 
Their  own  little  boy  died  on  the  following 
Monday,  the  2nd  of  October,  being  then 
sixteen  months  old.  It  was  decided  to  bury 
the  two  children  on  the  same  day.  On  the 
morning  of  the  day  chosen,  the  parish  priest 
Informed  Mr,  and  Mrs.  Jones  that  another 
child  had  died  In  the  neighbourhood  and 
that  Its  body  would  be  brought  Into  church 
along  with  the  two  others.  Mrs.  Jones  re- 
marked to  her  husband : 

"If  the  coffin  Is  blue,  then  my  dream  will 
come  true.  For  the  two  other  coffins  were 
white." 

The  third  coffin  was  brought;  it  was 
blue.  It  remains  to  be  observed  that  the 
dimensions  of  the  coffins  corresponded  ex- 
actly with  the  dream  premonitions,  the 
smallest  being  that  of  the  child  who  died 
first,  the  next  that  of  the  little  Jones  boy, 

130 


The  Unknown  Guest 

who  was  sixteen  months  old,  and  the 
largest,  the  blue  one,  that  of  a  boy  six  years 
of  age. 

Let  us  take,  more  or  less  at  random,  an- 
other case  from  the  inexhaustible  Proceed- 
ings.^ The  report  is  written  by  Mr.  Al- 
fred Cooper  and  attested  by  the  Duchess  of 
Hamilton,  the  Duke  of  Manchester  and  an- 
other gentleman  to  whom  the  duchess  re- 
lated the  incident  before  the  fulfilment  of 
the  prophetic  vision : 

"A  fortnight  before  the  death  of  the  late 

Earl  of  L ,"  says  Mr.  Cooper,  "in 

1882,  I  called  upon  the  Duke  of  Hamilton, 
in  Hill  Street,  to  see  him  professionally. 
After  I  had  finished  seeing  him,  we  went 
into  the  drawing-room,  where  the  duchess 
was,  and  the  duke  said  to  me : 

"  'Oh,  Cooper,  how  is  the  earl?' 

"The  duchess  said,  'What  earl?'  and,  on 

'^Proceedings,  vol.  xi.,  p.  505. 

131 


The  Unknown  Guest 

my  answering,  'Lord  L ,'  she  re- 
plied: 

"  'That  is  very  odd.  I  have  had  a  most 
extraordinary  vision.  I  went  to  bed,  but, 
after  being  in  bed  a  short  time,  I  was  not 
exactly  asleep,  but  thought  I  saw  a  scene 
as  if  from  a  play  before  me.     The  actors 

in  it  were  Lord  L ,  in  a  chair,  as  if 

in  a  fit,  with  a  man  standing  over  him  with 
a  red  beard.  He  was  by  the  side  of  a  bath, 
over  which  bath  a  red  lamp  was  distinctly 
shown.' 

"I  then  said: 

"  'I    am    attending   Lord   L at 

present;  there  is  very  little  the  matter  with 
him;  he  is  not  going  to  die;  he  will  be  all 
right  very  soon.' 

"Well,  he  got  better  for  a  week  and  was 
nearly  well,  but,  at  the  end  of  six  or  seven 
days  after  this,  I  was  called  to  see  him  sud- 
denly.   He  had  inflammation  of  both  lungs. 

"I  called  in  Sir  William  Jenner,  but  in 

132 


The  Unknown  Guest 

six  days  he  was  a  dead  man.  There  were 
two  male  nurses  attending  on  him;  one  had 
been  taken  ill.  But,  when  I  saw  the  other, 
the  dream  of  the  duchess  was  exactly  rep- 
resented. He  was  standing  near  a  bath 
over  the  earl  and,  strange  to  say,  his  beard 
was  red.  There  was  the  bath  with  the  red 
lamp  over  it;  and  this  brought  the  story 
to  my  mind. 

"The  vision  seen  by  the  duchess  was  told 
two  weeks  before  the  death  of  Lord 
L .    It  is  a  most  remarkable  thing." 

7 

But  it  is  impossible  to  find  space  for  the 
many  instances  related.  As  I  have  said, 
there  are  hundreds  of  them,  making  their 
tracks  in  every  direction  across  the  plains 
of  the  future.  Those  which  I  have  quoted 
give  a  sufficient  idea  of  the  predominating 
tone  and  the  general  aspect  of  this  sort  of 
story.     It  is  nevertheless  right  to  add  that 

133 


The  Unknown  Guest 

many  of  them  are  not  at  all  tragic  and  that 
premonition  opens  its  mysterious  and  ca- 
pricious vistas  of  the  future  in  connection 
with  the  most  diverse  and  insignificant 
events.  It  cares  but  little  for  the  human 
value  of  the  occurrence  and  puts  the  vision 
of  a  number  in  a  lottery  on  the  same  plane 
as  the  most  dramatic  death.  The  roads 
by  which  it  reaches  us  are  also  unexpected 
and  varied.  Often,  as  in  the  examples 
quoted,  it  comes  to  us  in  a  dream.  Some- 
times, it  is  an  auditory  or  visual  hallucina- 
tion which  seizes  upon  us  while  awake; 
sometimes,  an  indefinable  but  clear  and  ir- 
resistible presentiment,  a  shapeless  but  pow- 
erful obsession,  an  absurd  but  imperative 
certainty  which  rises  from  the  depths  of  our 
inner  darkness,  where  perhaps  lies  hidden 
the  final  answer  to  every  riddle. 

One  might  illustrate  each  of  these  mani- 
festations with  numerous  examples.  I  will 
mention  only  a  few,  selected  not  among  the 

134 


The  Unknown  Guest 

most  striking  or  the  most  attractive,  but 
among  those  which  have  been  most  strictly 
tested  and  investigated/  A  young  peasant 
from  the  neighbourhood  of  Ghent,  two 
months  before  the  drawing  for  the  con- 
scription, announces  to  all  and  sundry  that 
he  will  draw  number  90  from  the  urn.  On 
entering  the  presence  of  the  district-com- 
missioner in  charge,  he  asks  if  number  90 
is  still  in.  The  answer  is  yes. 
"Well,  then,  I  shall  have  it!" 
And,  to  the  general  amazement,  he 
does  draw  number  90. 

Questioned  as  to  the  manner  in  which  he 
acquired  this  strange  certainty,  he  declares 
that,  two  months  ago,  just  after  he  had 
gone  to  bed,  he  saw  a  huge,  indescribable 
form  appear  in  a  corner  of  his  room,  with 
the  number  90  standing  out  plainly  in  the 
middle,  in  figures  the  size  of  a  man's  hand. 
He  sat  up  in  bed  and  shut  and  opened  his 

^Proceedings,  vol.  xi.,  p.  545. 

13s 


The  Unknown  Guest 

eyes  to  persuade  himself  that  he  was  not 
dreaming.  The  apparition  remained  in  the 
same  place,  distinctly  and  undeniably. 

Professor  Georges  Hulin,  of  the  uni- 
versity of  Ghent,  and  M.  Jules  van 
Dooren,  the  district-commissioner,  who  re- 
port the  incident,  mention  three  other  simi- 
lar and  equally  striking  cases  witnessed  by 
M.  van  Dooren  during  his  term  of  office. 
I  am  the  less  inclined  to  doubt  their  decla- 
ration inasmuch  as  I  am  personally  ac- 
quainted with  them  and  know  that  their 
statements,  as  regards  the  objective  reality 
of  the  facts,  are  so  to  speak  equivalent  to 
a  legal  deposition.  M.  Bozzano  mentions 
some  previsions  which  are  quite  as  remark- 
able in  connection  with  the  gaming-tables 
at  Monte  Carlo. 

I  repeat,  I  am  aware  that,  in  the  case  of 
these  occurrences  and  those  which  resemble 
them,  it  is  possible  once  again  to  Invoke  the 
theory  of  coincidence.    It  will  be  contended 

136 


The  Unknown  Guest 

that  there  are  probably  a  thousand  predic- 
tions of  this  kind  which  are  never  talked 
about,  because  they  were  not  fulfilled, 
whereas,  if  one  of  them  is  accomplished, 
which  is  bound  by  the  law  of  probabilities 
to  happen  some  day  or  other,  the  astonish- 
ment is  general  and  free  rein  is  given  to  the 
imagination.  This  is  true;  nevertheless,  it 
is  well  to  enquire  whether  these  predictions 
are  as  frequent  as  is  loosely  stated.  In  the 
matter  of  those  which  concern  the  con- 
scription-drawings, for  instance,  I  have  had 
the  opportunity  of  interrogating  more  than 
one  constant  witness  of  these  little  dramas 
of  fate ;  and  all  admitted  that,  on  the  whole, 
they  are  much  rarer  than  one  would  be- 
lieve. Next,  we  must  not  forget  that  there 
can  be  no  question  here  of  scientific  proofs. 
We  are  in  the  midst  of  a  slippery  and 
nebulous  region,  where  we  would  not  dare 
to  risk  a  step  if  we  were  not  allowing  our- 
selves to  be  guided  by  our  feelings  rather 

137 


The  Unknown  Guest 

than  by  certainties  which  we  are  not  for- 
bidden to  hope  for,  but  which  are  not  yet 
in  sight. 

8 

We  will  abridge  our  subject  still  further, 
referring  readers  who  wish  to  know  the  de- 
tails to  the  originals,  lest  we  should  never 
have  done;  or  rather,  instead  of  attempt- 
ing an  abridgment,  which  would  still  be 
too  long,  so  plentiful  are  the  materials,  we 
will  content  ourselves  with  enumerating  a 
few  instances,  all  taken  from  Bozzano's 
Des  Phenomenes  prer?ionitoires.  We  read 
there  of  a  funeral  procession  seen  on  a  high- 
road several  days  before  it  actually  passed 
that  way;  or,  again,  of  a  young  mechanic 
who,  in  the  beginning  of  November, 
dreamt  that  he  came  home  at  half-past  five 
in  the  afternoon  and  saw  his  sister's  little 
girl  run  over  by  a  tram-car  while  crossing 
the  street  in  front  of  the  house.     He  told 

138 


The  Unknown  Guest 

his  dream,  In  great  distress;  and,  on  the 
13th  of  the  same  month,  in  spite  of  all  the 
precautions  that  had  been  taken,  the  child 
was  run  over  by  the  tram-car  and  killed  at 
the  hour  named.  We  find  the  ghost,  the 
phantom  animal  or  the  mysterious  noise 
which,  in  certain  families,  is  the  traditional 
herald  of  a  death  or  of  an  imminent  catas- 
trophe. We  find  the  celebrated  vision  which 
the  painter  Segantini  had  thirteen  days  be- 
fore his  decease,  every  detail  of  which  re- 
mained in  his  mind  and  was  represented  in 
his  last  picture.  Death.  We  find  the  Mes- 
sina disaster  clearly  foreseen,  twice  over,  by 
a  little  girl  who  perished  under  the  ruins 
of  the  ill-fated  city;  and  we  read  of  a  dream 
which,  three  months  before  the  French  in- 
vasion of  Russia,  foretold  to  Countess 
Toutschkoff  that  her  husband  would  fall 
at  Borodino,  a  village  so  little  known  at 
the  time  that  those  interested  in  the  dream 
looked  in  vain  for  its  name  on  the  maps. 

139 


The  Unknown  Guest 

Until  now  we  have  spoken  only  of  the 
spontaneous  manifestations  of  the  future. 
It  would  seem  as  though  coming  events, 
gathered  in  front  of  our  lives,  bear  with 
crushing  weight  upon  the  uncertain  and  de- 
ceptive dike  of  the  present,  which  is  no 
longer  able  to  contain  them.  They  ooze 
through,  they  seek  a  crevice  by  which  to 
reach  us.  But,  side  by  side  with  these 
passive,  independent  and  intractable  premo- 
nitions, which  are  but  so  many  vagrant  and 
furtive  emanations  of  the  unknown,  are 
others  which  do  yield  to  entreaty,  allow 
themselves  to  be  directed  into  channels,  are 
more  or  less  obedient  to  our  orders  and  will 
sometimes  reply  to  the  questions  which  we 
put  to  them.  They  come  from  the  same  In- 
accessible reservoir,  are  no  less  mysterious, 
but  yet  appear  a  little  more  human  than 
the  others;  and,  without  drugging  ourselves 
with  puerile  or  dangerous  illusions,  we  may 
be  permitted  to  hope  that.  If  we  follow 

140 


The  Unknown  Guest 

them  and  study  them  attentively,  they  will 
one  day  open  to  us  the  hidden  paths  that 
join  that  which  is  no  more  to  that  which  is 
not  yet. 

It  is  true  that  here,  where  we  must  needs 
mix  with  the  somewhat  lawless  world  of 
professional  mystery-mongers,  we  have  to 
increase  our  caution  and  walk  with  meas- 
ured steps  on  very  suspicious  ground.  But 
even  in  this  region  of  pitfalls  we  glean  a  cer- 
tain number  of  facts  that  cannot  reason- 
ably be  contested.  It  will  be  enough  to 
recall,  for  instance,  the  symbolic  premoni- 
tions of  the  famous  "seeress  of  Prevorst," 
Frau  Hauffe,  whose  prophetic  spirit  was 
awakened  by  soap-bubbles,  crystals  and  mir- 
rors;^ the  clairvoyant  who,  eighteen  years 
before  the  event,  foretold  the  death  of  a 
girl  by  the  hand  of  her  rival  in  1907,  in  a 
written  prophecy  which  was  presented  to 
the  court  by  the  mother  of  the  murdered 

^A.  J.  C.  Kerner:   Die  Scherin  von  Prevorst. 

141 


The  Unknown  Guest 

girl;^  the  gypsy  who,  also  in  writing,  fore- 
told all  the  events  in  Miss  Isabel  Arundel's 
life,  including  the  name  of  her  husband, 
Burton,  the  famous  explorer;'  the  sealed 
letter  addressed  to  M.  Morin,  vice-presi- 
dent of  the  Societe  du  Mesmerisme,  de- 
scribing the  most  unexpected  circumstances 
of  a  death  that  occurred  a  month  later  ;^ 
the  famous  "Marmontel  prediction,"  ob- 
tained by  Mrs.  Verrall's  cross-correspond- 
ences, which  gives  a  vision,  two  months  and 
a  half  before  their  accomplishment,  of  the 
most  insignificant  actions  of  a  traveller  in 
an  hotel  bedroom;*  and  many  others. 


I  will  not  review  the  various  and  very 

^Light,  1907,   p.  219.     The  crime  was  committed  in 
Paris  and  made  a  great  stir  at  the  time. 

2Lady  Burton:   The  Life  of  Captain  Sir  Richd.  F. 
Burton,  K.C.M.G.,  vol.  i.,  p.  253. 

^Journal  of  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research,  vol. 
ix.,  p.  15. 

^Proceedings,  vol.  xx.,  p.  331. 

142 


The  Unknown  Guest 

often  grotesque  methods  of  Interrogating 
the  future  that  are  most  frequently  prac- 
tised to-day:  cards,  palmistry,  crystal- 
gazing,  fortune-telling  by  means  of  coffee- 
grounds,  tea-leaves,  magnetic  needles  and 
white  of  egg,  graphology,  astrology  and 
the  rest.  These  methods,  as  I  have  already 
said,  are  worth  exactly  what  the  medium 
who  employs  them  is  worth.  They  have 
no  other  object  than  to  arouse  the  medium's 
subconsciousness  and  to  bring  it  into  rela- 
tion with  that  of  the  person  questioning 
him.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  all  these  purely 
empirical  processes  are  but  so  many,  often 
puerile  forms  of  self-manifestation  adopted 
by  the  undeniable  gift  which  is  known  as 
intuition,  clairvoyance  or,  in  certain  cases, 
psychometry.  I  have  spoken  at  sufficient 
length  of  this  last  faculty  not  to  linger  over 
it  now.  All  that  we  have  still  to  do  is  to 
consider  it  for  a  moment  in  its  relations 
with  the  foretelling  of  the  future. 

143 


The  Unknown  Guest 

A  large  number  of  Investigations,  nota- 
bly those  conducted  by  M.  Duchatel  and 
Dr.  Osty,  show  that,  in  psychometry,  the 
notion  of  time,  as  Dr.  Joseph  Maxwell  ob- 
serves, is  very  loose,  that  is  to  say,  the  past, 
present  and  future  nearly  always  overlap. 
Most  of  the  clairvoyant  or  psychometric 
subjects,  when  they  are  honest,  do  not 
know,  "do  not  feel,"  as  M.  Duchatel  very 
ably  remarks,  "what  the  future  is.  They  do 
not  distinguish  it  from  the  other  tenses; 
and  consequently  they  succeed  in  being 
prophets,  but  unconscious  prophets."  In 
a  word — and  this  is  a  very  important 
indication  from  the  point  of  view  of 
the  probable  coexistence  of  the  three 
tenses — it  appears  that  they  see  that  which 
is  not  yet  with  the  same  clearness  and  on 
the  same  plane  as  that  which  is  no  more, 
but  are  incapable  of  separating  the  two 
visions  and  picking  out  the  future  which 
alone  interests  us.    For  a  still  stronger  rea- 

144 


The  Unknown  Guest 

son,  it  is  impossible  for  them  to  state  dates 
with  precision.  Nevertheless,  the  fact  re- 
mains that,  when  we  take  the  trouble  to 
sift  their  evidence  and  have  the  patience  to 
await  the  realization  of  certain  events 
which  are  sometimes  not  due  for  a  long 
time  to  come,  the  future  is  fairly  often  per- 
ceived by  some  of  these  strange  sooth- 
sayers. 

There  are  psychometers,  however,  and 
notably  Mme.  M ,  Dr.  Osty's  favour- 
ite medium,  who  never  confuse  the  future 
and  the  past.  Mme.  M places  her  vi- 
sions in  time  according  to  the  position 
which  they  occupy  in  space.  Thus  she  sees 
the  future  in  front  of  her,  the  past  behind 
her  and  the  present  beside  her.  But,  not- 
withstanding these  distinctly-graded  visions, 
she  also  is  incapable  of  naming  her  dates 
exactly;  in  fact,  her  mistakes  in  this  respect 
are  so  general  that  Dr.  Osty  looks  upon  it 
as  a  pure  chronological  coincidence  when  a 

145 


The  Unknown  Guest 

prediction  is  realized  at  the  moment  fore- 
told. 

We  should  also  observe  that,  in  psy- 
chometry,  only  those  events  can  be  per- 
ceived which  relate  directly  to  the  individ- 
ual communicating  with  the  percipient,  for 
it  is  not  so  much  the  percipient  that  sees 
into  us  as  we  that  read  in  our  own  subcon- 
sciousness, which  is  momentarily  lighted  by 
his  presence.  We  must  not  therefore  ask 
him  for  predictions  of  a  general  character, 
whether,  for  instance,  there  will  be  a  war  in 
the  spring,  an  epidemic  in  the  summer  or 
an  earthquake  in  the  autumn.  The  mo- 
ment the  question  concerns  events,  however 
important,  with  which  we  are  not  intimately 
connected,  he  is  bound  to  answer,  as  do  all 
the  genuine  mediums,  that  he  sees  nothing. 

The  area  of  his  vision  being  thus  limited, 
does  he  really  discover  the  future  In  it? 
After  three  years  of  numerous,  cautious  and 

systematic   experiments   with   some  twenty 

146 


The  Unknown  Guest 

mediums,   Dr.   Osty  categorically  declares 
that  he  does: 

"All  the  incidents,"  he  says,  "which  filled 
these  three  years  of  my  life,  whether  wished 
for  by  me  or  not,  or  even  absolutely  con- 
trary to  the  ordinary  routine  of  my  life, 
had  always  been  foretold  to  me,  not  all  by 
each  of  the  clairvoyant  subjects,  but  all  by 
one  or  other  of  them.  As  I  have  been  prac- 
tising these  tests  continually,  it  seems  to  me 
that  the  experience  of  three  years  wholly 
devoted  to  this  object  should  give  some 
weight  to  my  opinion  on  the  subject  of  pre- 
dictions." 

This  is  incontestable;  and  the  sincerity, 
scientific  conscientiousness  and  high  intel- 
lectual value  of  Dr.  Osty's  fine  work  inspire 
one  with  the  most  entire  confidence.  Un- 
fortunately, he  contents  himself  with  quot- 
ing too  summarily  a  few  facts  and  does 
not,  as  he  ought,  give  us  in  extenso  the  de- 

147 


The  Unknown  Guest 

tails  of  his  experiments,  controls  and  tests. 
I  am  well  aware  that  this  would  be  a  thank- 
less and  wearisome  task,  necessitating  a 
large  volume  which  a  mass  of  puerile  inci- 
dents and  inevitable  repetitions  would  make 
almost  unreadable.  Moreover,  it  could 
scarcely  help  taking  the  form  of  an  inti- 
mate and  indiscreet  autobiography;  and  it 
is  not  easy  to  bring  one's  self  to  make  this 
sort  of  public  confession.  But  it  has  to  be 
done.  In  a  science  which  is  only  in  its  early 
stages,  it  is  not  enough  to  show  the  object 
attained  and  to  state  one's  conviction;  it  is 
necessary  above  all  to  describe  every  path 
that  has  been  taken  and,  by  an  incessant 
and  infinite  accumulation  of  investigated 
and  attested  facts,  to  enable  every  one  to 
draw  his  own  conclusions.  This  has  been 
the  cumbrous  and  laborious  method  of  the 
Proceedings  for  over  thirty  years;  and  it 
is  the  only  right  one.  Discussion  is  possi- 
ble and  fruitful  only  at  that  price.     In  all 

148  / 


The  Unknown  Guest 

these  extraconscious  matters,  we  have  not 
yet  reached  the  stage  of  definite  deductions, 
we  are  still  bringing  up  materials  to  the 
scene  of  operations. 

Once  more,  I  know  that,  in  these  cases, 
as  I  have  seen  for  myself,  the  really  con- 
vincing facts  are  necessarily  very  rare;  in- 
deed, nowhere  else  do  we  meet  with  the 
same  difficulty.  If  the  medium  tells  you,  for 

Instance,  as  Mme.  M seems  easily  to 

do,  how  you  will  employ  your  day  from  the 
morning  onwards,  if  she  sees  you  in  a  cer- 
tain house  in  a  certain  street  meeting  this 
or  that  person,  it  is  Impossible  to  say  that, 
on  the  one  hand,  she  is  not  already  reading 
your  as  yet  unconscious  plans  or  Intentions, 
or  that,  on  the  other  hand,  by  doing  what 
she  has  foreseen,  you  are  not  obeying  a  sug- 
gestion against  which  you  could  not  fight 
except  by  violently  doing  the  opposite  to 
what  it  demands  of  you,  which  again  would 
be  a   case  of  Inverted  suggestion.     None 

149 


The  Unknown  Guest 

therefore  would  have  any  value  save  pre- 
dictions of  unlikely  happenings,  clearly  de- 
fined and  outside  the  sphere  of  the  person 
interested.    As  Dr.  Osty  says : 

"The  ideal  prognostication  would  obvi- 
ously be  that  of  an  event  so  rare,  so  sud- 
den and  unexpected,  implying  such  a  change 
in  one's  mode  of  life  that  the  theory  of  co- 
incidence could  not  decently  be  put  for- 
ward. But,  as  everybody  is  not,  in  the 
peaceful  course  of  his  existence,  threatened 
by  such' an  absolutely  convincing  event,  the 
clairvoyant  cannot  always  reveal  to  the  per- 
son experimenting — and  reveal  it  for  a 
more  or  less  approximate  date — one  of 
those  incidents  whose  accomplishment 
would  carry  irresistible  conviction." 

In  any  case,  the  question  of  psychometric 
prognostications  calls  for  further  enquiry, 
although  it  is  easy  even  at  the  present  day 

to  foresee  the  results. 

150 


The  Unknown  Guest 

lO 

Let  us  now  return  to  our  spontaneous 
premonitions,  in  which  the  future  comes  to 
seek  us  of  its  own  accord  and,  so  to  speak, 
to  challenge  us  at  home.  I  know  from  per- 
sonal experience  that,  when  we  embark 
upon  these  disconcerting  matters,  the  first 
impression  is  scarcely  favourable.  We  are 
very  much  inclined  to  laugh,  to  treat  as 
wearisome  tales,  as  hysterical  hallucina- 
tions, as  ingenious  or  interested  fictions 
most  of  those  incidents  which  give  too  vio- 
lent a  shock  to  the  narrow  and  limited  idea 
which  we  have  of  our  human  life.  To 
smile,  to  reject  everything  beforehand  and 
to  pass  by  with  averted  head,  as  was  done, 
remember,  in  the  time  of  Galvani  and  in 
the  early  days  of  hypnotism,  is  much  more 
easy  and  seems  more  respectable  and  pru- 
dent than  to  stop,  admit  and  examine. 
Nevertheless  we  must  not  forget  that  it  is 
to  some  who  did  not  smile  so  lightly  that 

iSi 


The  Unknown  Guest 

we  owe  the  best  part  of  the  marvels  from 
whose  heights  we  are  preparing  to  smile 
in  our  turn.  For  the  rest,  I  grant  that,  thus 
presented,  hastily  and  summarily,  without 
the  details  that  throw  light  upon  them  and 
the  proofs  that  support  them,  the  incidents 
in  question  do  not  show  to  advantage  and, 
inasmuch  as  they  are  isolated  and  sparingly 
chosen,  lose  all  the  weight  and  authority 
derived  from  the  compact  and  imposing 
mass  whence  they  are  arbitrarily  detached. 
As  I  said  above,  nearly  a  thousand  cases 
have  been  collected,  representing  probably 
not  the  tenth  part  of  those  which  a  more 
active  and  general  search  might  bring  to- 
gether. The  number  is  evidently  of  im- 
portance and  denotes  the  enormous  pres- 
sure of  the  mystery;  but,  if  there  were  only 
half  a  dozen  genuine  cases — and  Dr.  Max- 
well's, Professor  Flournoy's,  Mrs.  Ver- 
rall's,  the  Marmontel,  Jones  and  Hamilton 
cases   and   some    others   are   undoubtedly 

152 


The  Unknown  Guest 

genuine — they  would  be  enough  to  show 
that,  under  the  erroneous  idea  which  we 
form  of  the  past  and  the  present,  a  new 
verity  is  living  and  moving,  eager  to  come 
to  light. 

The  efforts  of  that  verity,  I  need  hardly 
say,  display  a  very  different  sort  of  force 
after  we  have  actually  and  attentively  read 
those  hundreds  of  extraordinary  stories 
which,  without  appearing  to  do  so,  strike 
to  the  very  roots  of  history.  We  soon  lose 
all  inclination  to  doubt.  We  penetrate  into 
another  world  and  come  to  a  stop  all  out 
of  countenance.  We  no  longer  know  where 
we  stand;  before  and  after  overlap  and 
mingle.  We  no  longer  distinguish  the  in- 
sidious and  factitious  but  indispensable  line 
which  separates  the  years  that  have  gone 
by  from  the  years  that  are  to  come.  We 
clutch  at  the  hours  and  days  of  the  past  and 
present  to  reassure  ourselves,  to  fasten  on 
to  some  certainty,  to  convince  ourselves  that 

153 


The  Unknown  Guest 

we  are  still  in  our  right  place  in  this  life 
where  that  which  is  not  yet  seems  as  sub- 
stantial, as  real,  as  positive,  as  powerful  as 
that  which  is  no  more.  We  discover  with 
uneasiness  that  time,  on  which  we  based 
our  whole  existence,  itself  no  longer  exists. 
It  is  no  longer  the  swiftest  of  our  gods, 
known  to  us  only  by  its  flight  across  all 
things;  it  alters  its  position  no  more  than 
space,  of  which  it  is  doubtless  but  the  in- 
comprehensible reflex.  It  reigns  in  the  cen- 
tre of  every  event;  and  every  event  is  fixed 
in  its  centre ;  and  all  that  comes  and  all  that 
goes  passes  from  end  to  end  of  our  little 
life  without  moving  by  a  hair's  breadth 
around  its  motionless  pivot.  It  is  entitled 
to  but  one  of  the  thousand  names  which  we 
have  been  wont  to  lavish  upon  its  power, 
a  power  that  seemed  to  us  manifold  and 
innumerable:  yesterday,  recently,  formerly, 
erewhile,  after,  before,  to-morrow,  soon, 
never,     later     fall    like     childish    masks, 

154 


The  Unknown  Guest 

whereas  to-day  and  always  completely 
cover  with  their  united  shadows  the  idea 
which  we  form  in  the  end  of  a  duration 
which  has  no  subdivisions,  no  breaks  and 
no  stages,  which  is  pulseless,  motionless  and 
boundless. 

II 

Many  are  the  theories  which  men  have 
imagined  in  their  attempts  to  explain  the 
working  of  the  strange  phenomenon;  and 
many  others  might  be  imagined. 

As  we  have  seen,  self-suggestion  and 
telepathy  explain  certain  cases  which  con- 
cern events  already  in  existence,  but  still 
latent  and  perceived  before  the  knowledge 
of  them  can  reach  us  by  the  normal  process 
of  the  senses  or  the  intelligence.  But,  even 
by  extending  these  two  theories  to  their  ut- 
termost point  and  positively  abusing  their 
accommodating  elasticity,  we  do  not  suc- 
ceed in  illumining  by  their  aid  more  than  a 

155 


The  Unknown  Guest 

rather  restricted  portion  of  the  vast  undis- 
covered land.  We  must  therefore  look  for 
something  else. 

The  first  theory  which  suggests  itself  and 
which  on  the  surface  seems  rather  attractive 
is  that  of  spiritualism,  which  may  be  ex- 
tended until   it   is  scarcely  distinguishable 
from  the  theosophical  theory  and  other  re- 
ligious suppositions.      It  assumes  the   sur- 
vival of  spirits,  the  existence  of  discarnate 
or  other  superior  and  more  mysterious  en- 
tities which  surround  us,  interest  themselves 
in  our  fate,  guide  our  thoughts  and  our  ac- 
tions and,  above  all,  know  the  future.   It  is, 
as  we  recognized  when  speaking  of  ghosts 
and    haunted    houses,    a    very    acceptable 
theory;  and  any  one  to  whom  it  appears 
can  adopt  it  without  doing  violence  to  his 
Intelligence.     But  we  must  confess  that  it 
seems  less  necessary  and  perhaps  even  less 
clearly  proved  in  this  region  than  in  that. 
It  starts  by  begging  the  question;  without 

156 


The  Unknown  Guest 

the  Intervention  of  discarnate  beings,  the 
spiritualists  say,  It  Is  Impossible  to  explain 
the  majority  of  the  premonitory  phenom- 
ena; therefore  we  must  admit  the  existence 
of  these  discarnate  beings.     Let  us  grant  It 
for  the  moment,  for  to  beg  the  question, 
which  Is  merely  an  indefensible  trick  of  the 
superficial  logic  of  our  brain,  does  not  neces- 
sarily condemn  a  theory  and  neither  takes 
away  from  nor  adds  to  the  reality  of  things. 
Besides,  as  we  shall  Insist  later,  the  inter- 
vention or  non-intervention  of  the  spirits  Is 
not  the  point  at  issue;  and  the  crux  of  the 
mystery  does  not  lie  there.     What  must 
interest  us  Is  far  less  the  paths  or  intermedi- 
aries by  which  prophetic  warnings  reach  us 
than  the  actual  existence  of  the  future  in  the 
present.    It  is  true — to  do  complete  justice 
to  neospiritualism — that  its  position  offers 
certain  advantages  from  the  point  of  view 
of  the  almost  Inconceivable  problem  of  the 
preexistence  of  the  future.     It  can  evade 

157 


The  Unknown  Guest 

or  divert  some  of  the  consequences  of  that 
problem.  The  spirits,  it  declares,  do 
not  necessarily  see  the  future  as  a 
whole,  as  a  total  past  or  present,  motion- 
less and  immovable,  but  they  know  infi- 
nitely better  than  we  do  the  numberless 
causes  that  determine  any  agent,  so  that, 
finding  themselves  at  the  luminous  source 
of  those  causes,  they  have  no  difficulty  in 
foreseeing  their  effects.  They  are,  with  re- 
spect to  the  incidents  still  in  process  of  for- 
mation, in  the  position  of  an  astronomer 
who  foretells,  within  a  second,  all  the 
phases  of  an  eclipse  in  which  a  savage  sees 
nothing  but  an  unprecedented  catastrophe 
which  he  attributes  to  the  anger  of  his  idols 
of  straw  or  clay.  It  is  indeed  possible  that 
this  acquaintance  with  a  greater  number  of 
causes  explains  certain  predictions;  but 
there  are  plenty  of  others  which  presume  a 
knowledge  of  so  many  causes,  causes  so  re- 
mote and  so  profound,  that  this  knowledge 

158 


The  Unknown  Guest 

Is  hardly  to  be  distinguished  from  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  future  pure  and  simple.  In  any 
case,  beyond  certain  limits,  the  preexistence 
of  causes  seems  no  clearer  than  that  of  ef- 
fects. Nevertheless,  it  must  be  admitted 
that  the  spiritualists  gain  a  slight  advantage 
here. 

They  believe  that  they  gain  another 
when  they  say  or  might  say  that  it  is  still 
possible  that  the  spirits  stimulate  us 
to  realize  the  events  which  they  foretell 
without  themselves  clearly  perceiving  them 
in  the  future.  After  announcing,  for  in- 
stance, that  on  a  certain  day  we  shall  go  to 
a  certain  place  and  do  a  certain  thing,  they 
urge  us  Irresistibly  to  proceed  to  the  spot 
named  and  there  to  perform  the  act 
prophesied.  But  this  theory,  like  those  of 
self-suggestion  and  telepathy,  would  ex- 
plain only  a  few  phenomena  and  would 
leave  In  obscurity  all  those  cases,  infinitely 
more  numerous  because  they  make  up  al- 

159 


The  Unknown  Guest 

most  the  whole  of  our  future,  in  which 
either  chance  intervenes  or  some  event  in 
no  way  dependent  upon  our  will  or  the 
spirit's,  unless  indeed  we  suppose  that  the 
latter  possesses  an  omniscience  and  an  omni- 
potence which  take  us  back  to  the  original 
mysteries  of  the  problem. 

Besides,  in  the  gloomy  regions  of  pre- 
cognition, it  is  almost  always  a  matter  of 
anticipating  a  misfortune  and  very  rarely, 
if  ever,  of  meeting  with  a  pleasure  or  a 
joy.  We  should  therefore  have  to  admit 
that  the  spirits  which  drag  me  to  the  fatal 
place  and  compel  me  to  do  the  act  that  will 
have  tragic  consequences  are  deliberately 
hostile  to  me  and  find  diversion  only  in  the 
spectacle  of  my  suffering.  What  could 
those  -spirits  be,  from  what  evil  world 
would  they  arise  and  how  should  we  ex- 
plain why  our  brothers  and  friends  of  yes- 
terday, after  passing  through  the  august 
and  peace-bestowing  gates  of  death,  sud- 

i6o 


The  Unknown  Guest 

denly  become  transformed  into  crafty  and 
malevolent  demons?  Can  the  great 
spiritual  kingdom,  in  which  all  passions 
born  of  the  flesh  should  be  stilled,  be  but 
a  dismal  abode  of  hatred,  spite  and  envy? 
It  will  perhaps  be  said  that  they  lead  us 
into  misfortune  in  order  to  purify  us;  but 
this  brings  us  to  religious  theories  which 
it  is  not  our  intention  to  examine. 

12 

The  only  attempt  at  an  explanation  that 
can  hold  its  own  with  spiritualism  has  re- 
course once  again  to  the  mysterious  pow- 
ers of  our  subconsciousness.  We  must 
needs  recognize  that,  If  the  future  exists 
to-day,  already  such  as  It  will  be  when  it 
becomes  for  us  the  present  and  the  past, 
the  intervention  of  discarnate  minds  or  of 
any  other  spiritual  entity  adrift  from  an- 
other sphere  is  of  little  avail.  We  can  pic- 
ture an  infinite  spirit  indifferently  contem- 

i6i 


The  Unknown  Guest 

plating  the  past  and  future  in  their  co- 
existence ;  we  can  imagine  a  whole  hierarchy 
of  intermediate  intelligences  taking  a  more 
or  less  extensive  part  in  the  contemplation 
and  transmitting  it  to  our  subconsciousness. 
But  all  this  is  practically  nothing  more  than 
inconsistent  speculation  and  ingenious 
dreaming  in  the  dark;  in  any  case,  it  is  ad- 
ventitious, secondary  and  provisional.  Let 
us  keep  to  the  facts  as  we  see  them :  an  un- 
known faculty,  buried  deep  in  our  being  and 
generally  inactive,  perceives,  on  rare  occa- 
sions, events  that  have  not  yet  taken  place. 
We  possess  but  one  certainty  on  this  sub- 
ject, namely,  that  the  phenomenon  actually 
occurs  within  ourselves;  it  is  therefore 
within  ourselves  that  we  must  first  study  it, 
without  burdening  ourselves  with  supposi- 
tions which  remove  it  from  its  centre  and 
simply  shift  the  mystery.  The  incompre- 
hensible mystery  is  the  preexistence  of  the 
future;  once  we  admit  this — and  it  seems 

162 


The  Unknown  Guest 

very  difficult  to  deny — there  is  no  reason  to 
attribute  to  imaginary  intermediaries 
rather  than  to  ourselves  the  faculty  of 
descrying  certain  fragments  of  that  future. 
We  see,  in  regard  to  most  of  the  mediumis- 
tic  manifestations,  that  we  possess  within 
ourselves  all  the  unusual  forces  with  which 
the  spiritualists  endow  discarnate  spirits; 
and  why  should  It  be  otherwise  as  concerns 
the  powers  of  divination?  The  explanation 
taken  from  the  subconsciousness  is  the  most 
direct,  the  simplest,  the  nearest,  whereas 
the  other  is  endlessly  circuitous,  complicated 
and  distant.  Until  the  spirits  testify  to 
their  existence  in  an  unanswerable  fashion, 
there  is  no  advantage  in  seeking  in  the 
grave  for  the  solution  of  a  riddle  that  ap- 
pears indeed  to  lie  at  the  roots  of  our  own 
life. 

It  is  true  that  this  explanation  does  not 
explain  much ;  but  the  others  are  just  as  in- 

163 


The  Unknown  Guest 

effectual  and  are  open  to  the  same  objec- 
tions. These  objections  are  many  and  vari- 
ous; and  it  is  easier  to  raise  them  than  to 
reply  to  them.  For  instance,  we  can  ask 
ourselves  why  the  subconsciousness  or  the 
spirits,  seeing  that  they  read  the  future  and 
are  able  to  announce  an  impending  calam- 
ity, hardly  ever  give  us  the  one  useful  and 
definite  indication  that  would  allow  us  to 
avoid  it.  What  can  be  the  childish  or  mys- 
terious reason  of  this  strange  reticence?  In 
many  cases  it  is  almost  criminal;  for  in- 
stance, in  a  case  related  by  Professor 
Hyslop^  we  see  the  foreboding  of  the  great- 
est misfortune  that  can  befall  a  mother 
germinating,  growing,  sending  out  shoots, 
developing,  like  some  gluttonous  and 
deadly  plant,  to  stop  short  on  the  verge  of 
the  last  warning,  the  one  detail,  insignifi- 
cant in  itself  but  indispensable,  which 
would  have  saved  the  child.     It  is  the  case 

^Proceedings,   vol.  xiv.,   p.  266. 

164 


The  Unknown  Guest 

of  a  woman  who  begins  by  experiencing  a 
vague  but  powerful  impression  that  a 
grievous  "burden"  was  going  to  fall  upon 
her  family.  Next  month,  this  premonitory 
feeling  repeats  itself  very  frequently,  be- 
comes more  intense  and  ends  by  concentrat- 
ing itself  upon  the  poor  woman's  little 
daughter.  Each  time  that  she  is  planning 
something  for  the  child's  future,  she  hears 
a  voice  saying: 

"She'll  never  need  it." 

A  week  before  the  catastrophe,  a  violent 
smell  of  fire  fills  the  house.  From  that  time 
the  mother  begins  to  be  careful  about 
matches,  seeing  that  they  are  in  safe  places 
and  out  of  reach.  She  looks  all  over  the 
house  for  them  and  feels  a  strong  impulse 
to  burn  all  matches  of  the  kind  easily 
lighted.  About  an  hour  before  the  fatal 
disaster,  she  reaches  for  a  box  to  destroy  it; 
but  she  says  to  herself  that  her  eldest  boy 
is  gone  out,  thinks  that  she  may  need  the 

i6s 


The  Unknown  Guest 

matches  to  light  the  gas-stove  and  decides 
to  destroy  them  as  soon  as  he  comes  back. 
She  takes  the  child  up  to  its  crib  for  its 
morning  sleep  and,  as  she  is  putting  it  into 
the  cradle,  she  hears  the  usual  mysterious 
voice  whisper  in  her  ear: 

"Turn  the  mattress." 

But,  being  in  a  great  hurry,  she  simply 
says  that  she  will  turn  the  mattress  after 
the  child  has  taken  its  nap.  She  then  goes 
downstairs  to  work.  After  a  while,  she 
hears  the  child  cry  and,  hurrying  up  to  the 
room,  finds  the  crib  and  its  bedding  on  fire 
and  the  child  so  badly  burnt  that  it  dies 
in  three  hours. 

Before  going  further  and  theorizing 
about  this  case,  let  us  once  more  state  the 
matter  precisely.  I  know  that  the  reader 
may  straightway  and  quite  legitimately 
deny  the  value  of  anecdotes  of  this  kind. 

166 


The  Unknown  Guest 

He  will  say  that  we  have  to  do  with  a  neu- 
rotic who  has  drawn  upon  her  imagina- 
tion for  all  the  elements  that  give  a  dra- 
matic setting  to  the  story  and  surround  with 
a  halo  of  mystery  a  sad  but  commonplace 
domestic  accident.  This  is  quite  possible; 
and  it  is  perfectly  allowable  to  dismiss  the 
case.  But  it  is  none  the  less  true  that,  by 
thus  deliberately  rejecting  everything  that 
does  not  bear  the  stamp  of  mathematical  or 
judicial  certainty,  we  risk  losing  as  we  go 
along  most  of  the  opportunities  or  clues 
which  the  great  riddle  of  this  world  offers 
us  in  its  moments  of  inattention  or  gracious- 
ness.  At  the  beginning  of  an  enquiry  we 
must  know  how  to  content  ourselves  with 
little.  For  the  incident  in  question  to  be 
convincing,  previous  evidence  in  writing, 
more  or  less  official  statements,  would  be 
required,  whereas  we  have  only  the  decla- 
rations of  the  husband,  a  neighbour  and  a 

sister.    This  Is  Insufficient,  I  agree;  but  we 

167 


The  Unknown  Guest 

must  at  the  same  time  confess  that  the  cir- 
cumstances are  hardly  favourable  to  obtain- 
ing the  proofs  which  we  demand.  Those 
who  receive  warnings  of  this  kind  either  be- 
lieve in  them  or  do  not  believe  in  them. 
If  they  believe  in  them,  it  is  quite  natural 
that  they  should  not  think  first  of  all  of  the 
scientific  interest  of  their  trouble,  or  of  put- 
ting down  in  writing  and  thus  authenticat- 
ing its  premonitory  symptoms  and  gradual 
evolution.  If  they  do  not  believe  in  them, 
it  is  no  less  natural  that  they  should  not  pro- 
ceed to  speak  or  take  notice  of  inanities  of 
which  they  do  not  recognize  the  value  until 
after  they  have  lost  the  opportunity  of  sup- 
plying convincing  proofs  of  them.  Also, 
do  not  forget  that  the  little  story  in  ques- 
tion is  selected  from  among  a  hundred 
others,  which  in  their  turn  are  equally  in- 
decisive, but  which,  repeating  the  same 
facts  and  the  same  tendencies  with  a  strange 


i68 


The  Unknown  Guest 

persistency,  end  by  weakening  the  most  In- 
veterate distrust/ 

15 
Having  said  this  much,  In  order  to  con- 
ciliate or  part  company  with  those  who 
have  no  intention  of  leaving  the  terra  firma 
of  science,  let  us  return  to  the  case  before 
us,  which  is  all  the  more  disquieting  inas- 
much as  we  may  consider  it  a  sort  of  proto- 
type of  the  tragic  and  almost  diabolical 
reticence  which  we  find  in  most  premoni- 
tions. It  Is  probable  that  under  the 
mattress  there  was  a  stray  match  which  the 
child  discovered  and  struck;  this  is  the  only 
possible  explanation  of  the  catastrophe,  for 
there  was  no  fire  burning  on  that  floor  of 
the  house.  If  the  mother  had  turned  the 
mattress,  she  would  have  seen  the  match; 

^See,  in  particular,  Bozzano's  cases  xlix.  and  Ixvii. 
These  two,  especially  case  xlix.,  which  tells  of  a  per- 
sonal experience  of  the  late  W.  T.  Stead,  are  sup- 
ported by  more  substantial  proofs.  I  have  quoted 
Professor  Hyslop's  case,  because  the  reticence  is  more 
striking. 

169 


The  Unknown  Guest 

and,  on  the  other  hand,  she  would  certainly 
have  turned  the  mattress  if  she  had  been 
told  that  there  was  a  match  underneath  it. 
Why  did  the  voice  that  urged  her  to  per- 
form the  necessary  action  not  add  the  one 
word  that  was  capable  of  ensuring  that  ac- 
tion? The  problem  moreover  is  equally 
perturbing  and  perhaps  equally  insoluble 
whether  it  concerns  our  own  subconscious 
faculties,  or  spirits,  or  strange  intelligences. 
Those  who  give  these  warnings  must  know 
that  they  will  be  useless,  because  they  mani- 
festly foresee  the  event  as  a  whole ;  but  they 
must  also  know  that  one  last  word,  which 
they  do  not  pronounce,  would  be  enough 
to  prevent  the  misfortune  that  is  already 
consummated  in  their  prevision.  They 
know  it  so  well  that  they  bring  this  word 
to  the  very  edge  of  the  abyss,  hold  it  sus- 
pended there,  almost  let  it  fall  and  re- 
capture it  suddenly  at  the  moment  when  its 
weight  would  have  caused  happiness  and 

170 


The  Unknown  Guest 

life  to  rise  once  more  to  the  surface  of  the 
mighty  gulf.  What  then  is  this  mystery? 
Is  it  incapacity  or  hostility?  If  they  are  in- 
capable, what  is  the  unexpected  and 
sovran  force  that  interposes  between  them 
and  us?  And,  if  they  are  hostile,  on 
what,  on  whom  are  they  revenging  them- 
selves? What  can  be  the  secret  of  those 
inhuman  games,  of  those  uncanny  and 
cruel  diversions  on  the  most  slippery  and 
dangerous  peaks  of  fate?  Why  warn,  if 
they  know  that  the  warning  will  be  in  vain  ? 
Of  whom  are  they  making  sport?  Is  there 
really  an  inflexible  fatality  by  virtue  of 
which  that  which  has  to  be  accomplished  is 
accomplished  from  all  eternity?  But  then 
why  not  respect  silence,  since  all  speech  is 
useless?  Or  do  they,  in  spite  of  all,  per- 
ceive a  gleam,  a  crevice  in  the  inexorable 
wall?  What  hope  do  they  find  in  it? 
Have  they  not  seen  more  clearly  than 
ourselves   that   no    deliverance    can    come 

171 


The  Unknown  Guest 

through  that  crevice?  One  could  under- 
stand this  fluttering  and  wavering,  all  these 
efforts  of  theirs,  If  they  did  not  know;  but 
here  it  is  proved  that  they  know  everything, 
since  they  foretell  exactly  that  which  they 
might  prevent.  If  we  press  them  with 
questions,  they  answer  that  there  Is  nothing 
to  be  done,  that  no  human  power  could 
avert  or  thwart  the  Issue.  Are  they  mad, 
bored,  irritable,  or  accessory  to  a  hideous 
pleasantry?  Does  our  fate  depend  on  the 
happy  solution  of  some  petty  enigma  or 
childish  conundrum,  even  as  our  salvation, 
In  most  of  the  so-called  revealed  religions, 
Is  settled  by  a  blind  and  stupid  cast  of  the 
die?  Is  all  the  liberty  that  we  are  granted 
reduced  to  the  reading  of  a  more  or  less 
ingenious  riddle?  Can  the  great  soul  of 
the  universe  be  the  soul  of  a  great  baby? 

i6 

But,  rather  than' pursue  this  subject,  let 

172 


The  Unknown  Guest 

us  be  just  and  admit  that  there  is  perhaps 
no  way  out  of  the  maze  and  that  our  re- 
proaches are  as  incomprehensible  as  the 
conduct  of  the  spirits.  Indeed,  what  would 
you  have  them  do  in  the  circle  in  which  our 
logic  imprisons  them?  Either  they  foretell 
us  a  calamity  which  their  predictions  can- 
not avert,  in  which  case  there  is  no  use  in 
foretelling  it,  or,  if  they  announce  it  to  us 
and  at  the  same  time  give  us  the  means  to 
prevent  it,  they  do  not  really  see  the  future 
and  are  foretelling  nothing,  since  the  calam- 
ity is  not  to  take  place,  with  the  result  that 
their  action  seems  equally  absurd  in  both 
cases. 

It  is  obvious :  to  whichever  side  we  turn, 
we  find  nothing  but  the  incomprehensible. 
On  the  one  hand,  the  preestablished,  un- 
shakable, unalterable  future  which  we  have 
called  destiny,  fatality  or  what  you  will, 
which  suppresses  man's  entire  independence 
and  liberty  of  action  and  which  is  the  most 

173 


The  Unknown  Guest 

inconceivable  and  the  dreariest  of  mys- 
teries; on  the  other,  intelligences  apparently 
superior  to  our  own,  since  they  know  what 
we  do  not,  which,  while  aware  that  their 
intervention  is  always  useless  and  very 
often  cruel,  nevertheless  come  harassing  us 
with  their  sinister  and  ridiculous  predic- 
tions. Must  we  resign  ourselves  once  more 
to  living  with  our  eyes  shut  and  our  reason 
drowned  in  the  boundless  ocean  of  dark- 
ness; and  is  there  no  outlet? 

17 

For  the  moment  we  will  not  linger  in 
the  dark  regions  of  fatality,  which  is  the 
supreme  mystery,  the  desolation  of  every 
effort  and  every  thought  of  man.  What 
is  clearest  amid  this  incomprehensibility  is 
that  the  spiritualistic  theory,  at  first  sight 
the  most  seductive,  declares  itself,  on  ex- 
amination, the  most  difficult  to  justify.  We 
will  also  once  more  put  aside  the  theosophi- 

174 


The  Unknown  Guest 

cal  theory  or  any  other  which  assumes  a 
divine  intention  and  which  might,  to  a  cer- 
tain extent,  explain  the  hesitations  and 
anguish  of  the  prophetic  warnings,  at  the 
cost,  however,  of  other  puzzles,  a  thousand 
times  as  hard  to  solve,  which  nothing  au- 
thorizes us  to  substitute  for  the  actual  puz- 
zle, formless  and  infinite,  presented  to  our 
uninitiated  vision. 

When  all  is  said,  it  is  perhaps  only  in  the 
theory  which  attributes  those  premonitions 
to  our  subconsciousness  that  we  are  able  to 
find,  if  not  a  justification,  at  least  a  sort  of 
explanation  of  that  formidable  reticence. 
They  accord  fairly  well  with  the  strange, 
inconsistent,  whimsical  and  disconcerting 
character  of  the  unknown  entity  within 
us  that  seems  to  live  on  nothing  but 
nondescript  fare  borrowed  from  worlds  to 
which  our  intelligence  as  yet  has  no  access. 
It  lives  under  our  reason,  in  a  sort  of  in- 
visible and  perhaps  eternal  palace,  like  a 

175 


The  Unknown  Guest 

casual  guest,  dropped  from  another  planet, 
whose  Interests,  ideas,  habits,  passions  have 
naught  in  common  with  ours.  If  it  seems 
to  have  notions  on  the  hereafter  that  are 
infinitely  wider  and  more  precise  than  those 
which  we  possess,  it  has  only  very  vague 
notions  on  the  practical  needs  of  our  exist- 
ence. It  ignores  us  for  years,  absorbed  no 
doubt  with  the  numberless  relations  which 
it  maintains  with  all  the  mysteries  of  the 
universe;  and,  when  suddenly  it  remembers 
us,  thinking  apparently  to  please  us,  it 
makes  an  enormous,  miraculous,  but  at  the 
same  time  clumsy  and  superfluous  move- 
ment, which  upsets  all  that  we  believed  we 
knew,  without  teaching  us  anything.  Is  it 
making  fun  of  us.  Is  It  jesting.  Is  It  amus- 
ing Itself,  is  it  facetious,  teasing,  arch,  or 
simply  sleepy,  bewildered,  Inconsistent, 
absent-minded?  In  any  case,  it  is  rather 
remarkable    that    It    evidently    dislikes    to 

make  Itself  useful.    It  readily  performs  the 

176 


The  Unknown  Guest 

most  glamorous  feats  of  slelght-of-hand, 
provided  that  we  can  derive  no  profit  from 
them.  It  lifts  up  tables,  moves  the  heaviest 
articles,  produces  flowers  and  hair,  sets 
strings  vibrating,  gives  life  to  inanimate  ob- 
jects and  passes  through  solid  matter,  con- 
jures up  ghosts,  subjugates  time  and  space, 
creates  light;  but  all,  it  seems,  on  one  con- 
dition, that  its  performances  should  be 
without  rhyme  or  reason  and  keep  to  the 
province  of  supernaturally  vain  and  puerile 
recreations.  The  case  of  the  divining-rod 
is  almost  the  only  one  in  which  it  lends  us 
any  regular  assistance,  this  being  a  sort  of 
game,  of  no  great  importance,  in  which  it 
appears  to  take  pleasure.  Sometimes,  to 
say  all  that  can  be  said,  it  consents  to  cure 
certain  ailments,  cleanses  an  ulcer,  closes  a 
wound,  heals  a  lung,  strengthens  or  makes 
supple  an  arm  or  leg,  or  even  sets  bones, 
but  always  as  it  were  by  accident,  without 

reason,   method  or  object,   in  a  deceitful, 

177 


The  Unknown  Guest 

illogical  and  preposterous  fashion.  One 
would  set  it  down  as  a  spoilt  child  that  has 
been  allowed  to  lay  hands  on  the  most  tre- 
mendous secrets  of  heaven  and  earth;  it  has 
no  suspicion  of  their  power,  jumbles  them 
all  up  together  and  turns  them  into  paltry, 
inoffensive  toys.  It  knows  everything,  per- 
haps, but  is  ignorant  of  the  uses  of  its 
knowledge.  It  has  its  arms  laden  with 
treasures  which  it  scatters  in  the  wrong 
manner  and  at  the  wrong  time,  giving  bread 
to  the  thirsty  and  water  to  the  hungry, 
overloading  those  who  refuse  and  stripping 
the  suppliant  bare,  pursuing  those  who  flee 
from  it  and  fleeing  from  those  who  pursue 
it.  Lastly,  even  at  its  best  moments,  it  be- 
haves as  though' the  fate  of  the  being  in 
whose  depths  it  dwells  interested  it  hardly 
at  all,  as  though  it  had  but  an  insignificant 
share  in  his  misfortunes,  feeling  assured, 
one  might  almost  think,  of  an  independent 
and  endless  existence, 

178 


The  Unknown  Guest 

It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  when  we 
know  its  habits,  that  its  communications  on 
the  subject  of  the  future  should  be  as  fan- 
tastic as  the  other  manifestations  of  its 
knowledge  or  its  power.  Let  us  add,  to  be 
quite  fair,  that,  in  those  warnings  which 
we  would  wish  to  see  efficacious,  it  stumbles 
against  the  same  difficulties  as  the  spirits 
or  other  alien  intelligences  uselessly  fore- 
telling the  event  which  they  cannot  prevent, 
or  annihilating  the  event  by  the  very  fact 
of  foretelling  it. 

i8 

And  now,  to  end  the  question,  is  our  un- 
known guest  alone  responsible?  Does  it 
explain  itself  badly  or  do  we  not  under- 
stand it?  When  we  look  into  the  matter 
closely,  there  is,  under  those  anomalous  and 
confused  manifestations,  in  spite  of  efforts 
which  we  feel  to  be  enormous  and  perse- 
vering,    a    sort    of    incapacity    for    self- 

179 


The  Unknown  Guest 

expression   and   action  which   Is  bound  to 
attract  our  attention.     Is  our  conscious  and 
Individual  life  separated  by   Impenetrable 
worlds    from   our   subconscious   and  prob- 
ably unlv^ersal  life?     Does  our  unknown 
guest  speak  an  unknown  language  and  do 
the  words  which  it  speaks  and  which  we 
think    that    we    understand     disclose    Its 
thought?     Is   every  direct   road  pitilessly 
barred  and  Is  there  nothing  left  to  it  but 
narrow,  closed  paths  In  which  the  best  of 
what  It  had  to  reveal  to  us  Is  lost?     Is 
this  the  reason  why  It  seeks  those  odd,  child- 
ish, roundabout  ways  of  automatic  writing, 
cross-correspondence,  symbolic  premonition 
and  all  the  rest?     Yet,  in  the  typical  case 
which  we  have  quoted,  it  seems  to  speak 
quite  easily  and  plainly  when  it  says  to  the 
mother: 

"Turn  the  mattress." 

If  it  can  utter  this  sentence,  why  should 

it  find  it  difficult  or  impossible  to  add: 

i8o 


The  Unknown  Guest 

"You  will  find  the  matches  there  that 
will  set  fire  to  the  curtains." 

What  forbids  it  to  do  so  and  closes  its 
mouth  at  the  decisive  moment?  We  relapse 
into  the  everlasting  question:  if  it  cannot 
complete  the  second  sentence  because  it 
would  be  destroying  in  the  womb  the  very 
event  which  it  is  foretelling,  why  does  it 
utter  the  first? 

19 

But  it  is  well  in  spite  of  everything  to 
seek,  an  explanation  of  the  inexplicable;  it 
is  by  attacking  it  on  every  side,  at  all 
hazards,  that  we  cherish  the  hope  of  over- 
coming it;  and  we  may  therefore  say  to 
ourselves  that  our  subconsciousness,  when  it 
warns  us  of  a  calamity  that  is  about  to  fall 
upon  us,  knowing  all  the  future  as  it  does, 
necessarily  knows  that  the  calamity  is  al- 
ready accomplished.    As  our  conscious  and 

unconscious  lives  blend  in  it,  It  distresses  it- 

181 


The  Unknown  Guest 

self  and  flutters  around  our  overconfident 
ignorance.     It  tries  to  inform  us,  through 
nervousness,  through  pity,  so  as  to  mitigate 
the  lightning  cruelty  of  the  blow.    It  speaks 
all  the  words  that  can  prepare  us  for  its 
coming,  define  it  and  identify  it;  but  it  is 
unable  to  say  those  which  would  prevent 
it   from  coming,  seeing  that  it  has  come, 
that  it  is  already  present  and  perhaps  past, 
manifest,    ineffaceable,    on    another    plane 
than  that  on  which  we  live,  the  only  plane 
which  we   are   capable  of  perceiving.      It 
finds  itself,  in  a  word,  in  the  position  of 
the   man   who,   in   the  midst   of  peaceful, 
happy  and  unsuspecting  folk,  alone  knows 
some  bad  news.     He  is  neither  able  nor 
willing  to  announce  it  nor  yet  to  hide  it 
completely.      He  hesitates,   delays,   makes 
more  or  less  transparent  allusions,  but  does 
not  either  say  the  last  word  that  would,  so 
to  speak,  let  loose  the  catastrophe  in  the 
hearts  of  the  people  around  him,   for  to 

182 


The  Unknown  Guest 

those  who  do  not  know  of  it  the  catastrophe 
is  still  as  though  it  were  not  there.  Our 
subconsciousness,  in  that  case,  would  act 
towards  the  future  as  we  act  towards  the 
past,  the  two  conditions  being  identical,  so 
much  so  that  it  often  confuses  them,  as 
we  can  see  more  particularly  in  the  cele- 
brated Marmontel  case,  where  it  evidently 
blunders  and  reports  as  accomplished  an 
incident  that  will  not  take  place  until  several 
months  later.  It  is  of  course  impossible 
for  us,  at  the  stage  which  we  have  reached, 
to  understand  this  confusion  or  this  coexist- 
ence of  the  past,  the  present  and  the  future; 
but  that  is  no  reason  for  denying  it ;  on  the 
contrary,  what  man  understands  least  is 
probably  that  which  most  nearly  approaches 
the  truth. 

20 

Lastly,  to  complicate  the  question,  it  may 
be  very  justly  objected  that,   though  pre- 

183 


The  Unknown  Guest 

monitions  in  general  are  useless  and  appear 
systematically  to  withhold  the  only  indis- 
pensable and  decisive  words,  there  are, 
nevertheless,  some  that  often  seem  to  save 
those  who  obey  them.  These,  it  is  true, 
are  rarer  than  the  first,  but  still  they  include 
a  certain  number  that  are  well-authenti- 
cated. It  remains  to  be  seen  how  far  they 
imply  a  knowledge  of  the  future. 

Here,  for  instance,  is  a  traveller  who, 
arriving  at  night  in  a  small  unknown  town 
and  walking  along  the  ill-lighted  dock  in 
the  direction  of  an  hotel  of  which  he 
roughly  knows  the  position,  at  a  given  mo- 
ment feels  an  irresistible  impulse  to  turn 
and  go  the  other  way.  He  instantly  obeys, 
though  his  reason  protests  and  "berates  him 
for  a  fool"  in  taking  a  roundabout  way  to 
his  destination.  The  next  day  he  discovers 
that,  if  he  had  gone  a  few  feet  farther,  he 
would  certainly  have  slipped  into  the  river; 
and,  as  he  was  but  a  feeble  swimmer,  he 

184 


The  Unknown  Guest 

would  just  as  certainly,  being  alone  and  un- 
aided in  the  extreme  darkness,  have  been 
drowned/ 

But  is  this  a  prevision  of  an  event?  No, 
for  no  event  is  to  take  place.  There  is 
simply  an  abnormal  perception  of  the  prox- 
imity of  some  unknown  water  and  conse- 
quently of  an  imminent  danger^  an  unex- 
plained but  fairly  frequent  subliminal  sensi- 
tiveness. In  a  word,  the  problem  of  the 
future  is  not  raised  in  this  case,  nor  in  any 
of  the  numerous  cases  that  resemble  it. 

Here  is  another  which  evidently  belongs 
to  the  same  class,  though  at  first  sight  it 
seems  to  postulate  the  preexistence  of  a 
fatal  event  and  a  vision  of  the  future  cor- 
responding exactly  with  a  vision  of  the  past. 
A  traveller  in  South  America  is  descending 
a  river  in  a  canoe;  the  party  are  just  about 
to  run  close  to  a  promontory  when  a  sort 
of  mysterious  voice,  which  he  has  already 

'^Proceedings,  vol.  xi.,  p.  422. 

I8S 


The  Unknown  Guest 

heard  at  different  momentous  times  of  his 
life,  imperiously  orders  him  immediately  to 
cross  the  river  and  gain  the  other  shore  as 
quickly  as  possible.  This  appears  so  ab- 
surd that  he  is  obliged  to  threaten  the  In- 
dians with  death  to  force  them  to  take  this 
course.  They  have  scarcely  crossed  more 
than  half  the  river  when  the  promontory 
falls  at  the  very  place  where  they  meant  to 
round  it.^ 

The  perception  of  imminent  danger  is 
here,  I  admit,  even  more  abnormal  than 
In  the  previous  example,  but  it  comes  under 
the  same  heading.  It  is  a  phenomenon 
of  subliminal  hypersensltiveness  observed 
more  than  once,  a  sort  of  premonition  in- 
duced by  subconscious  perceptions,  which 
has  been  christened  by  the  barbarous  name 
of  "cryptaesthesia."  But  the  interval  be- 
tween the  moment  when  the  peril  is  sig- 
nalled and  that  at  which  It  Is  consummated 

^Flournoy:    Esprits  et  mediums,  p.  316. 

186 


The  Unknown  Guest 

is  too  short  for  those  questions  which  re- 
late to  a  knowledge  or  a  preexistence  of 
the  future  to  arise  in  this  instance. 

The  case  is  almost  the  same  with  the 
adv'enture  of  an  American  dentist,  very 
carefully  investigated  by  Dr.  Hodgson. 
The  dentist  was  bending  over  a  bench  on 
which  was  a  little  copper  in  which  he  was 
vulcanizing  some  rubber,  when  he  heard  a 
voice  calling,  in  a  quick  and  imperative 
manner,  these  words: 

"Run  to  the  window,  quick!  Run  to 
the  window,  quick!" 

He  at  once  ran  to  the  window  and  looked 
out  to  the  street  below,  when  suddenly  he 
heard  a  tremendous  report  and,  looking 
round,  saw  that  the  copper  had  exploded, 
destroying  a  great  part  of  the  workroom.^ 

Here  again,  a  subconscious  cautiousness 
was  probably  aroused  by  certain  indications 
imperceptible  to  our  ordinary  senses.     It  is 

^Proceedings,  vol.  xi.,  p.  +24. 

187 


The  Unknown  Guest 

even  possible  that  there  exists  between 
things  and  ourselves  a  sort  of  sympathy  or 
subliminal  communion  which  makes  us  ex- 
perience the  trials  and  emotions  of  matter 
that  has  reached  the  limits  of  its  existence, 
unless,  as  is  more  likely,  there  is  merely  a 
simple  coincidence  between  the  chance  idea 
of  a  possible  explosion  and  its  realization. 

A  last  and  rather  more  complicated  case 
is  that  of  Jean  Dupre,  the  sculptor,  who 
was  driving  alone  with  his  wife  along  a 
mountain  road,  skirting  a  perpendicular 
cliff.  Suddenly  they  both  heard  a  voice  that 
seemed  to  come  from  the  mountain  crying: 

"Stop!" 

They  turned  round,  saw  nobody  and  con- 
tinued their  road.  But  the  cries  were  re- 
peated again  and  again,  without  anything  to 
reveal  the  presence  of  a  human  being  amid 
the  solitude.  At  last  the  sculptor  alighted 
and  saw  that  the  left  wheel  of  the  carriage, 
which  was  grazing  the  edge  of  the  preci- 

i88 


The  Unknown  Guest 

pice,  had  lost  its  linch-pin  and  was  on  the 
point  of  leaving  the  axle-tree,  which  would 
almost  inevitably  have  hurled  the  carriage 
into  the  abyss. 

Need  we,  even  here,  relinquish  the  theory 
of  subconscious  perceptions?  Do  we  know 
and  can  the  author  of  the  anecdote,  whose 
good  faith  is  not  in  question,  tell  us  that 
certain  unperceived  circumstances,  such  as 
the  grating  of  the  wheel  or  the  swaying  of 
the  carriage,  did  not  give  him  the  first 
alarm?  After  all,  we  know  how  easily 
stories  of  this  kind  involuntarily  take  a 
dramatic  turn  even  at  the  actual  moment 
and  especially  afterwards. 

21 

These  examples — and  there  are  many 
more  of  a  similar  kind — are  enough,  I 
think,  to  illustrate  this  class  of  premoni- 
tions. The  problem  in  these  'cases  is  simpler 

than  when  it  relates  to  fruitless  warnings; 

189 


The  Unknown  Guest 

at  least  it  is  simpler  so  long  as  we  do  not 
bring  into  discussion  the  question  of  spirits, 
of  unknown  intelligences,  or  of  an  actual 
knowledge  of  the  future;  otherwise  the 
same  difficulty  reappears  and  the  warning, 
which  this  time  seems  efficacious,  is  in  real- 
ity just  as  vain.  In  fact,  the  mysterious 
entity  which  knows  that  the  traveller  will 
go  to  the  water's  edge,  that  the  wheel  will 
be  on  the  point  of  leaving  the  axle,  that  the 
copper  will  explode,  or  that  the  promontory 
will  fall  at  a  precise  moment,  must  at  the 
same  time  know  that  the  traveller  will  not 
take  the  last  fatal  step,  that  the  carriage 
will  not  be  overturned,  that  the  copper  will 
not  hurt  anybody  and  that  the  canoe  will 
pull  away  from  the  promontory.  It  is  inad- 
missible that,  seeing  one  thing,  it  will  not 
see  the  other,  since  everything  happens  at 
the  same  point,  in  the  course  of  the  same 
second.  Can  we  say  that,  if  it  had  not 
given  warning,  the  little  saving  movement 

190 


The  Unknown  Guest 

would  not  have  been  executed?  How  can 
we  imagine  a  future  which,  at  one  and  the 
same  time,  has  parts  that  are  steadfast  and 
others  that  are  not?  If  it  is  foreseen  that 
the  promontory  will  fall  and  that  the 
traveller  will  escape,  thanks  to  the  super- 
natural warning,  it  is  necessarily  foreseen 
that  the  warning  will  be  given;  and,  if  so, 
what  is  the  point  of  this  futile  comedy? 
I  see  no  reasonable  explanation  of  it  in  the 
spiritist  or  spiritualistic  theory,  which  postu- 
lates a  complete  knowledge  of  the  future, 
at  least  at  a  settled  point  and  moment.  On 
the  other  hand,  if  we  adhere  to  the  theory 
of  a  subliminal  consciousness,  we  find  there 
an  explanation  which  is  quite  worthy  of 
acceptance.  This  subliminal  consciousness, 
though,  in  the  majority  of  cases,  it  has  no 
clear  and  comprehensive  vision  of  the  im- 
mediate future,  can  nevertheless  possess 
an  intuition  of  Imminent  danger,  thanks  to 
indications  that  escape  our  ordinary  percep- 

191 


The  Unknown  Guest 

tion.  It  can  also  have  a  partial,  intermit- 
tent and  so  to  speak  flickering  vision  of 
the  future  event  and,  if  doubtful,  can  risk 
giving  an  incoherent  warning,  which,  for 
that  matter,  will  change  nothing  in  that 
which  already  is. 

22 

In  conclusion,  let  us  state  once  more  that 
fruitful  premonitions  necessarily  annihilate 
events  in  the  bud  and  consequently  work 
their  own  destruction,  so  that  any  control 
becomes  impossible.  They  would  have  an 
existence  only  if  they  prophesied  a  general 
event  which  the  subject  would  not  escape 
but  for  the  warning.  If  they  had  said  to 
any  one  intending  to  go  to  Messina  two  or 
three  months  before  the  catastrophe, 
"Don't  go,  for  the  town  will  be  destroyed 
before  the  month  is  out,"  we  should  have 
an  excellent  example.  But  it  is  a  remark- 
able  thing  that   genuine   premonitions    of 

192 


The  Unknown  Guest 

this  kind  are  very  rare  and  nearly  always 
rather  indefinite  in  regard  to  events  of  a 
general  order.  In  M.  Bozzano's  excellent 
collection,  which  is  a  sort  of  compendium 
of  premonitory  phenomena,  the  only  pretty 
clear  cases  are  nos.  civ.  and  clviii.,  both  of 
which  are  taken  from  the  Journal  of  the 
S.P.R.  In  the  first, ^  a  mother  sent  a 
servant  to  bring  home  her  little  daughter, 
who  had  already  left  the  house  with  the 
intention  of  going  through  the  "railway 
garden,"  a  strip  of  ground  between  the  sea- 
wall and  the  railway-embankment,  in  order 
to  sit  on  the  great  stones  by  the  seaside 
and  see  the  trains  pass  by.  A  few  minutes 
after  the  little  girl's  departure,  the  mother 
had  distinctly  and  repeatedly  heard  a  voice 
within  her  say: 

"Send  for  her  back,  or  something  dread- 
ful will  happen  to  her," 

Now,  soon  after,  a  train  ran  off  the  line 

^Journal,  vol.  viii.,  p.  45. 

193 


The  Unknown  Guest 

and  the  engine  and  tender  fell,  breaking 
through  the  protecting  wall  and  crashing 
down  on  the  very  stones  where  the  child 
was  accustomed  to  sit. 

In  the  other  case/  into  which  Professor 
W.  F.  Barrett  made  a  special  enquiry,  Cap- 
tain MacGowan  was  In  Brooklyn  with  his 
two  boys,  then  on  their  holidays.  He 
promised  the  boys  that  he  would  take  them 
to  the  theatre  and  booked  seats  on  the 
previous  day;  but  on  the  day  of  the  pro- 
posed visit  he  heard  a  voice  within  him  con- 
stantly saying: 

"Do  not  go  to  the  theatre;  take  the  boys 
back  to  school." 

He  hesitated,  gave  up  his  plan  and  re- 
sumed It  again.  But  the  words  kept  repeat- 
ing themselves  and  Impressing  themselves 
upon  him;  and,  In  the  end,  he  definitely 
decided  not  to  go,  much  to  the  two  boys' 
disgust.     That  night  the  theatre  was  de- 

^Ibid.,  vol.  i.,  p.  283. 

194 


The  Unknown  Guest 

stroyed  by  fire,  with  a  loss  of  three  hun- 
dred lives. 

We  may  add  to  this  the  prevision  of  the 
Battle  of  Borodino,  to  which  I  have  already 
alluded.  I  will  give  the  story  in  fuller  de- 
tail, as  told  in  the  journal  of  Stephen  Grel- 
let  the  Quaker. 

About  three  months  before  the  French 
army  entered  Russia,  the  wife  of  General 
Toutschkoff  dreamt  that  she  was  at  an  inn 
in  a  town  unknown  to  her  and  that  her 
father  came  into  her  room,  holding  her 
only  son  by  the  hand,  and  said  to  her,  in  a 
pitiful  tone: 

"Your  happiness  is  at  an  end.  He" 
— meaning  Countess  Toutschkoff's  hus- 
band— "has  fallen.  He  has  fallen  at 
Borodino." 

The  dream  was  repeated  a  second  and  a 
third  time.  Her  anguish  of  mind  was  such 
that  she  woke  her  husband  and  asked  him: 

"Where  is  Borodino?" 

195 


The  Unknown  Guest 

They  looked  for  the  name  on  the  map 
and  did  not  find  it. 

Before  the  French  armies  reached  Mos- 
cow, Count  Toutschlcoff  was  placed  at  the 
head  of  the  army  of  reserve;  and  one  morn- 
ing her  father,  holding  her  son  by  the  hand, 
entered  her  room  at  the  inn  where  she  was 
staying.  In  great  distress,  as  she  had  be- 
held him  in  her  dream,  he  cried  out: 

"He  has  fallen.  He  has  fallen  at  Boro- 
dino." 

Then  she  saw  herself  in  the  very  same 
room  and  through  the  windows  beheld  the 
very  same  objects  that  she  had  seen  in  her 
dreams.  Her  husband  was  one  of  the  many 
who  perished  in  the  battle  fought  near  the 
River  Borodino,  from  which  an  obscure 
village  takes  its  name.^ 

23 
This  is  evidently  a  very  rare  and  perhaps 

'^Memoirs  of  the  Life  and  Labours  of  Stephen 
Grellet,  vol.  i.,  p.  434. 

196 


The  Unknown  Guest 

solitary  example  of  a  long-dated  prediction 
of  a  great  historic  event  which  nobody 
could  foresee.  It  stirs  more  deeply  than 
any  other  the  enormous  problems  of  fatal- 
ity, free-will  and  responsibility.  But  has 
it  been  attested  with  sufficient  rigour  for 
us  to  rely  upon  it?  That  I  cannot  say.  In 
any  case,  it  has  not  been  sifted  by  the 
S.P.R.  Next,  from  the  special  point  of 
view  that  interests  us  for  the  moment,  we 
are  unable  to  declare  that  this  premonition 
had  any  chance  of  being  of  avail  and  pre- 
venting the  general  from  going  to  Boro- 
dino. It  is  highly  probable  that  he  did  not 
know  where  he  was  going  or  where  he 
was;  besides,  the  irresistible  machinery  of 
war  held  him  fast  and  it  was  not  his 
part  to  disengage  his  destiny.  The  pre- 
monition, therefore,  could  only  have  been 
given  because  it  was  certain  not  to  be 
obeyed. 

As  for  the  two  previous  cases,  nos.  civ. 

197 


The  Unknown  Guest 

and  clviii.,  we  must  here  again  remark  the 
usual  strange  reservations  and  observe  how 
difficult  it  is  to  explain  these  premonitions 
save  by  attributing  them  to  our  subcon- 
sciousness. The  main,  unavoidable  event  is 
not  precisely  stated;  but  a  subordinate  con- 
sequence seems  to  be  averted,  as  though  to 
make  us  believe  in  some  definite  power  of 
free-will.  Nevertheless,  the  mysterious  en- 
tity that  foresaw  the  catastrophe  must  also 
have  foreseen  that  nothing  would  happen 
to  the  person  whom  it  was  warning;  and 
this  brings  us  back  to  the  useless  farce  of 
which  we  spoke  above.  Whereas,  with  the 
theory  of  a  subconscious  self,  the  latter  may 
have — as  in  the  case  of  the  traveller,  the 
promontory,  the  copper  or  the  carriage — 
not  this  time  by  inferences  or  indications 
that  escape  our  perception,  but  by  other  un- 
known means,  a  vague  presentiment  of  an 
impending  peril,  or,  as  I  have  already  said, 

a  partial,  intermittent  and  unsettled  vision 

198 


The  Unknown  Guest 

of  the  future  event,  and,  in  its  doubt,  may 
utter  its  cry  of  alarm. 

Whereupon  let  us  recognize  that  it  is 
almost  forbidden  to  human  reason  to  stray 
In  these  regions;  and  that  the  part  of  a 
prophet  is,  next  to  that  of  a  commentator 
of  prophecies,  one  of  the  most  difficult  and 
thankless  that  a  man  can  attempt  to  sustain 
on  the  world's  stage. 

24 

I  am  not  sure  if  it  is  really  necessary, 
before  closing  this  chapter,  to  follow  in  the 
wake  of  many  others  and  broach  the  prob- 
lem of  the  preexistence  of  the  future,  which 
includes  those  of  fatality,  of  free-will,  of 
time  and  of  space,  that  is  to  say,  all  the 
points  that  touch  the  essential  sources  of  the 
great  mystery  of  the  universe.  The  theo- 
logians and  the  metaphysicians  have  tackled 
these  problems  from  every  side  without 
giving  us  the  least  hope  of  solving  them. 

199 


The  Unknown  Guest 

Among  those  which  life  sets  us,  there  is 
none  to  which  our  brain  seems  more  defi- 
nitely and  strictly  closed;  and  they  remain, 
if  not  as  unimaginable,  at  least  as  incom- 
prehensible as  on  the  day  when  they  were 
first  perceived.  What  corresponds,  outside 
us,  with  what  we  call  time  and  space?  We 
know  nothing  about  it;  and  Kant,  speaking 
in  the  name  of  the  "apriorists,"  who  hold 
that  the  idea  of  time  is  innate  in  us,  does 
not  teach  us  much  when  he  tells  us  that 
time,  like  space,  is  an  a  priori  form  of  our 
sensibility,  that  is  to  say,  an  intuition  pre- 
ceding experience,  even  as  Guyau,  among 
the  "empiricists,"  who  consider  that  this 
idea  Is  acquired  only  by  experience,  does 
not  enlighten  us  any  more  by  declaring  that 
this  same  time  Is  the  abstract  formula  of 
the  changes  In  the  universe.  Whether 
space,  as  Leibnitz  maintains,  be  an  order 
of  coexistence  and  time  an  order  of  se- 
quences,  whether  it  be  by  space  that  we 

200 


The  Unknown  Guest 

succeed  in  representing  time  or  whether 
time  be  an  essential  form  of  any  represen- 
tation, whether  time  be  the  father  of  space 
or  space  the  father  of  time,  one  thing  is 
certain,  which  is  that  the  efforts  of  the 
Kantian  or  neo-Kantian  apriorists  and  of 
the  pure  empiricists  and  the  idealistic  em- 
piricists all  end  in  the  same  darkness;  that 
all  the  philosophers  who  have  grappled 
with  the  formidable  dual  problem,  among 
whom  one  may  mention  indiscriminately 
the  names  of  the  greatest  thinkers  of  yes- 
terday and  to-day  —  Herbert  Spencer, 
Helmholtz,  Renouvier,  James  Sully, 
Stumpf,  James  Ward,  William  James, 
Stuart  Mill,  Ribot,  Fouillee,  Guyau,  Bain, 
Lechalas,  Balmes,  Dunan  and  endless 
others — have  been  unable  to  tame  it;  and 
that,  however  much  their  theories  may  con- 
tradict one  another,  they  are  all  equally 
defensible  and  alike  struggle  vainly  in  the 

201 


The  Unknown  Guest 

darkness  against  shadows  that  are  not  of 
our  world. 

25 
To  catch  a  ghmpse  of  this  strange  prob- 
lem of  the  preexistence  of  the  future,  as  it 
shows  itself  to  each  of  us,  let  us  essay  more 
humbly  to  translate  it  into  tangible  images, 
to  place  it  as  it  were  upon  the  stage.  I  am 
writing  these  lines  sitting  on  a  stone,  in  the 
shade  of  some  tall  beeches  that  overlook  a 
little  Norman  village.  It  is  one  of  those 
lovely  summer  days  when  the  sweetness  of 
life  is  almost  visible  in  the  azure  vase  of 
earth  and  sky.  In  the  distance  stretches 
the  immense,  fertile  valley  of  the  Seine, 
with  its  green  meadows  planted  with  rest- 
ful trees,  between  which  the  river  flows  like 
a  long  path  of  gladness  leading  to  the  misty 
hills  of  the  estuary.  I  am  looking  down  on 
the  village-square,  with  its  ring  of  young 
lime-trees.    A  procession  leaves  the  church 

and,  amid  prayers  and  chanting,  they  carry 

202 


The  Unknown  Guest 

the  statue  of  the  Virgin  around  the  sacred 
pile.  I  am  conscious  of  all  the  details  of 
the  ceremony:  the  sly  old  cure  perfunctorily 
bearing  a  small  reliquary;  four  cholrmen 
opening  their  mouths  to  bawl  forth  va- 
cantly the  Latin  words  which  convey  noth- 
ing to  them;  two  mischievous  serving-boys 
in  frayed  cassocks ;  a  score  of  little  girls, 
young  girls  and  old  maids  in  white,  all 
starched  and  flounced,  followed  by  six  or 
seven  .village  notables  in  baggy  frock- 
coats.  The  pageant  disappears  behind  the 
trees,  comes  Into  sight  again  at  the  bend 
of  the  road  and  hurries  back  Into  the 
church.  The  clock  In  the  steeple  strikes  five, 
as  though  to  ring  down  the  curtain  and 
mark  in  the  infinite  history  of  events  which 
none  will  recollect  the  conclusion  of  a  spec- 
tacle which  never  again,  until  the  end  of 
the  world  and  of  the  universe  of  worlds, 
will  be  just  what  It  was  during  those  sec- 
onds when  It  beguiled  my  wandering  eyes. 

203 


The  LJnknown  Guest 

For  in  vain  will  they  repeat  the  proces- 
sion next  year  and  every  year  after:  never 
again  will  it  be  the  same.  Not  only  will 
several  of  the  actors  probably  have  disap- 
peared, but  all  those  who  resume  their  old 
places  in  the  ranks  will  have  undergone  the 
thousand  little  visible  and  invisible  changes 
wrought  by  the  passing  days  and  weeks.  In 
a  word,  this  insignificant  moment  is  unique, 
irrecoverable,  inimitable,  as  are  all  the  mo- 
ments in  the  existence  of  all  things;  and 
this  little  picture,  enduring  for  a  few  sec- 
onds suspended  in  boundless  duration,  has 
lapsed  into  eternity,  where  henceforth  it 
will  remain  in  its  entirety  to  the  end  of 
time,  so  much  so  that,  if  a  man  could  one 
day  recapture  in  the  past,  among  what 
some  one  has  called  the  "astral  negatives," 
the  image  of  what  it  was,  he  would  find  It 
intact,  unchanged,  ineffaceable  and  unde- 
niable. 

204 


The  Unknown  Guest 

26 

It  is  not  difficult  for  us  to  conceive  that 
one  can  thus  go  back  and  see  again  the 
astral  negative  of  an  event  that  is  no  more ; 
and  retrospective  clairvoyance  appears  to 
us  a  wonderful  but  not  an  impossible  thing. 
It  astonishes  but  does  not  stagger  our  rea- 
son. But,  when  it  becomes  a  question  of 
discovering  the  same  picture  in  the  future, 
the  boldest  imagination  flounders  at  the  first 
step.  How  are  we  to  admit  that  there 
exists  somewhere  a  representation  or  repro- 
duction of  that  which  has  not  yet  existed? 
Nevertheless,  some  of  the  incidents  which 
we  have  just  been  considering  seem  to  prove 
in  an  almost  conclusive  manner  not  only 
that  such  representations  are  possible,  but 
that  we  may  arrive  at  them  more  fre- 
quently, not  to  say  more  conveniently,  than 
at  those  of  the  past.  Now,  once  this  rep- 
resentation preexists,  as  we  are  obliged  to 
admit  in  the  case  of  a  certain  number  of 

205 


The  Unknown  Guest 

premonitions,  the  riddle  remains  the  same 
whether  the  preexistence  be  one  of  a  few 
hours,  a  few  years  or  several  centuries.  It 
Is  therefore  possible — ^for,  in  these  mat- 
ters, we  must  go  straight  to  extremes  or  else 
leave  them  alone — it  is  therefore  possible 
that  a  seer  mightier  than  any  of  to-day, 
some  god,  demigod  or  demon,  some  un- 
known, universal  or  vagrant  Intelligence, 
saw  that  procession  a  million  years  ago,  at 
a  time  when  nothing  existed  of  that  which 
composes  and  surrounds  It  and  when  the 
very  earth  on  which  it  moves  had  not  yet 
risen  from  the  ocean  depths.  And  other 
seers,  as  mighty  as  the  first,  who  from  age 
to  age  contemplated  the  same  spot  and  the 
same  moment,  would  always  have  per- 
ceived, through  the  vicissitudes  and  up- 
heavals of  seas,  shores  and  forests,  the 
same  procession  going  round  the  same 
little  church  that  still  lay  slumbering  in  the 

oceanic  ooze  and  made  up  of  the  same  per- 

206 


The  Unknown  Guest 

sons  sprung  from  a  race  that  was  perhaps 
not  yet  represented  on  the  earth. 

27 

It  is  obviously  difficult  for  us  to  under- 
stand that  the  future  can  thus  precede 
chaos,  that  the  present  is  at  the  same  time 
the  future  and  the  past,  or  that  that  which 
is  not  yet  exists  already  at  the  same  time 
at  which  it  is  no  more.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  it  is  just  as  hard  to  conceive  that 
the  future  does  not  preexist,  that  there  is 
nothing  before  the  present  and  that  every- 
thing is  only  present  or  past.  It  is  very 
probable  that,  to  a  more  universal  intelli- 
gence than  ours,  everything  is  but  an  eter- 
nal present,  an  immense  punctum  stans^  as 
the  metaphysicians  say,  in  which  all  the 
events  are  on  one  plane;  but  it  is  no  less 
probable  that  we  ourselves,  so  long  as  we 
are  men,  in  order  to  understand  anything  of 
this  eternal  present,  will  always  be  obliged 

207 


The  Unknown  Guest 

to  divide  it  into  three  parts.  Thus  caught 
between  two  mysteries  equally  baffling  to 
our  intelligence,  whether  we  deny  or  admit 
the  preexistence  of  the  future,  we  are  really 
only  wrangling  over  words :  in  the  one  case, 
we  give  the  name  of  "present,"  from  the 
point  of  view  of  a  perfect  intelligence,  to 
that  which  to  us  is  the  future ;  in  the  other, 
we  give  the  name  of  "future"  to  that  which, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  a  perfect  intel- 
ligence, is  the  present.  But,  after  all,  it  is 
incontestable  in  both  cases  that,  at  least 
from  our  point  of  view,  the  future  preexists, 
since  preexistence  is  the  only  name  by  which 
we  can  describe  and  the  only  form  under 
which  we  can  conceive  that  which  we  do 
not  yet  see  in  the  present, 

28 

Attempts  have  been  made  to  shed  light 

on  the  riddle  by  transferring  it  to  space.    It 

Is  true  that  it  there  loses  the  greater  part 

208 


The  Unknown  Guest 

of  its  obscurity;  but  this  apparently  is  be- 
cause, in  changing  its  environment,  it  has 
completely  changed  its  nature  and  no 
longer  bears  any  relation  to  what  it  was 
when  it  was  placed  in  time.  We  are  told, 
for  instance,  that  innumerable  cities  dis- 
tributed over  the  surface  of  the  earth  are 
to  us  as  if  they  were  not,  so  long  as  we 
have  not  seen  them,  and  only  begin  to  exist 
on  the  day  when  we  visit  them.  That  is 
true;  but  space,  outside  all  metaphysical 
speculations,  has  realities  for  us  which 
time  does  not  possess.  Space,  although 
very  mysterious  and  incomprehensible  once 
we  pass  certain  limits,  is  nevertheless  not, 
like  time,  incomprehensible  and  illusory  in 
all  its  parts.  We  are  certainly  quite  able 
to  conceive  that  those  towns  which  we  have 
never  seen  and  doubtless  never  will  see  in- 
dubitably exist,  whereas  we  find  it  much 
more  difficult  to  imagine  that  the  catas- 
trophe which,  fifty  years  hence,  will  annihi- 

209 


The  Unknown  Guest 

late  one  of  them  already  exists  as  really  as 
the  town  itself.  We  are  capable  of  pic- 
turing a  spot  whence,  with  keener  eyes  than 
those  which  we  boast  to-day,  we  should  see 
in  one  glance  all  the  cities  of  the  earth  and 
even  those  of  other  worlds,  but  it  is  much 
less  easy  for  us  to  imagine  a  point  in  the 
ages  whence  we  should  simultaneously  dis- 
cover the  past,  the  present  and  the  future, 
because  the  past,  the  present  and  the  future 
are  three  orders  of  duration  which  cannot 
find  room  at  the  same  time  in  our  intelli- 
gence and  which  inevitably  devour  one  an- 
other. How  can  we  picture  to  ourselves, 
for  instance,  a  point  in  eternity  at  which 
our  little  procession  already  exists,  while  it 
is  not  yet  and  although  it  is  no  more?  Add 
to  this  the  thought  that  it  is  necessary  and 
inevitable,  from  the  millenaries  which  had 
no  beginning,  that,  at  a  given  moment,  at 
a  given  place,  the  little  procession  should 
leave  the  little  church  in  a  given  manner 

210 


The  Unknown  Guest 

and  that  no  known  or  imaginable  will  can 
change  anything  in  it,  in  the  future  any 
more  than  in  the  past;  and  we  begin  to 
understand  that  there  is  no  hope  of  under- 
standing. 

29 
We  find  among  the  cases  collected  by  M. 
Bozzano  a  singular  premonition  wherein 
the  unknown  factors  of  space  and  time  are 
continued  in  a  very  curious  fashion.  In 
August,  19 10,  Cavaliere  Giovanni  de 
Figueroa,  one  of  the  most  famous  fencing- 
masters  at  Palermo,  dreamt  that  he  was 
in  the  country,  going  along  a  road  white 
with  dust,  which  brought  him  to  a  broad 
ploughed  field.  In  the  middle  of  the  field 
stood  a  rustic  building,  with  a  ground- 
floor  used  for  store-rooms  and  cow-sheds 
and  on  the  right  a  rough  hut  made  of 
branches  and  a  cart  with  some  harness  ly- 
ing in  it. 

A  peasant  wearing  dark  trousers,  with  a 

211 


The  Unknown  Guest 

black  felt  hat  on  his  head,  came  forward  to 
meet  him,  asked  him  to  follow  him  and  took 
him  round  behind  the  house.  Through  a 
low,  narrow  door  they  entered  a  little  stable 
with  a  short,  winding  stone  staircase  lead- 
ing to  a  loft  over  the  entrance  to  the  house. 
A  mule  fastened  to  a  swinging  manger  was 
blocking  the  bottom  step ;  and  the  chevalier 
had  to  push  it  aside  before  climbing  the 
staircase.  On  reaching  the  loft,  he  noticed 
that  from  the  ceiling  were  suspended  strings 
of  melons,  tomatoes,  onions  and  Indian 
corn.  In  this  room  were  two  women  and  a 
little  girl;  and  through  a  door  leading  to 
another  room  he  caught  sight  of  an  extreme- 
ly high  bed,  unlike  any  that  he  had  ever  seen 
before. 

Here  the  dream  broke  off.  It  seemed  to 
him  so  strange  that  he  spoke  of  it  to  several 
of  his  friends,  whom  he  mentions  by  name 
and  who  are  ready  to  confirm  his  state- 
ments. 

212 


The  Unknown  Guest 

On  the  1 2th  of  October  in  the  same  year, 
in  order  to  support  a  fellow-townsman  in  a 
duel,  he  accompanied  the  seconds,  by  motor- 
car, from  Naples  to  Marano,  a  place  which 
he  had  never  visited  nor  even  heard  of.  As 
soon  as  they  were  some  way  in  the  country, 
he  was  curiously  impressed  by  the  white  and 
dusty  road.  The  car  pulled  up  at  the  side 
of  a  field  which  he  at  once  recognized. 
They  alighted;  and  he  remarked  to  one  of 
the  seconds : 

"This  is  not  the  first  time  that  I  have 
been  here.  There  should  be  a  house  at  the 
end  of  this  path  and  on  the  right  a  hut  and 
a  cart  with  some  harness  in  it." 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  everything  was  as  he 
described  it.  An  instant  later,  at  the  exact 
moment  foreseen  by  the  dream,  the  peasant 
in  the  dark  trousers  and  the  black  felt  hat 
came  up  and  asked  him  to  follow  him.  But, 
instead  of  walking  behind  him,  the  chevalier 
went  in  front,  for  he  already  knew  the  way. 

213 


The  Unknown  Guest 

He  found  the  stable  and,  exactly  at  the 
place  which  It  occupied  two  months  before, 
near  its  swinging  manger,  the  mule  blocking 
the  way  to  the  staircase.  The  fencing- 
master  went  up  the  steps  and  once  more  saw 
the  loft,  with  the  ceiling  hung  with  melons, 
onions  and  tomatoes,  and,  in  a  corner  on  the 
right,  the  two  silent  women  and  the  child, 
identical  with  the  figures  in  his  dream,  while 
in  the  next  room  he  recognized  the  bed 
whose  extraordinary  height  had  so  much 
impressed  him. 

It  really  looks  as  if  the  facts  themselves, 
the  extramundane  realities,  the  eternal  veri- 
ties, or  whatever  we  may  be  pleased  to  call 
them,  have  tried  to  show  us  here  that  time 
and  space  are  one  and  the  same  illusion,  one 
and  the  same  convention  and  have  no  exist- 
ence outside  our  little  day-spanned  under- 
standing; that  "everywhere"  and  "always" 
are  exactly  synonymous  terms  and  reign 
alone    as    soon    as    we    cross    the    narrow 

214 


The  Unknown  Guest 

boundaries  of  the  obscure  consciousness  in 
which  we  live.  We  are  quite  ready  to 
admit  that  Cavaliere  de  Figueroa  may  have 
had  by  clairvoyance  an  exact  and  detailed 
vision  of  places  which  he  was  not  to  visit 
until  later:. this  is  a  pretty  frequent  and  al- 
most classical  phenomenon,  which,  as  it 
affects  the  realities  of  space,  does  not  as- 
tonish us  beyond  measure  and,  in  any  case, 
does  not  take  us  out  of  the  world  which 
our  senses  perceive.  The  field,  the  house, 
the  hut,  the  loft  do  not  move;  and  it  is  no 
miracle  that  they  should  be  found  in  the 
same  place.  But,  suddenly,  quitting  this 
domain  where  all  is  stationary,  the  phenom- 
enon is  transferred  to  time  and,  in  those  un- 
known places,  at  the  foretold  second,  brings 
together  all  the  moving  actors  of  that  little 
drama  in  two  acts,  of  which  the  first  was 
performed  some  two  and  a  half  months 
before,  in  the  depths  of  some  mysterious 
other  life  where  it  seemed  to  be  motion- 

2IS 


The  Unknown  Guest 

lessly  and  irrevocably  awaiting  its  terres- 
trial realization.  Any  explanation  would 
but  condense  this  vapour  of  petty  mysteries 
into  a  fevv^  drops  in  the  ocean  of  mysteries. 
Let  us  note  here  again,  in  passing,  the 
strange  freakishness  of  these  premonitions. 
They  accumulate  the  most  precise  and  cir- 
cumstantial details  as  long  as  the  scene  re- 
mains insignificant,  but  come  to  a  sudden 
stop  before  the  one  tragic  and  interesting 
scene  of  the  drama :  the  duel  and  Its  issue. 
Here  again  we  recognize  the  Inconsistent, 
impotent,  ironical  or  humorous  habits  of 
our  unknown  guest. 

But  we  will  not  prolong  these  somewhat 

vain    speculations    concerning    space    and 

time.    We  are  merely  playing  with  words 

that  represent  very  badly  Ideas  which  we 

do  not  put  Into  form  at  all.     To  sum  up, 

If  It  Is  difficult  for  us  to  conceive  that  the 

216 


The  Unknown  Guest 

future  preexists,  perhaps  it  is  even  more 
difficult  for  us  to  understand  that  it  does 
not  exist;  moreover,  a  certain  number  of 
facts  tend  to  prove  that  it  is  as  real  and 
definite  and  has,  both  in  time  and  in  eter- 
nity, the  same  permanence  and  the  same 
vividness  as  the  past.  Now,  from  the  mo- 
ment that  it  preexists,  it  is  not  surprising 
that  we  should  be  able  to  know  it;  it  is  even 
astonishing,  granted  that  it  overhangs  us  on 
every  side,  that  we  should  not  discover  it  oft- 
ener  and  more  easily.  It  remains  to  be  learnt 
what  would  become  of  our  life  if  every- 
thing were  foreseen  in  it,  if  we  saw  it  un- 
folding beforehand.  In  its  entirety,  with  its 
events  which  would  have  to  be  inevitable, 
because,  if  it  were  possible  for  us  to  avoid 
them,  they  would  not  exist  and  we  could 
not  perceive  them.  Suppose  that,  instead  of 
being  abnormal,  uncertain,  obscure,  debata- 
ble and  very  unusual,  prediction  became,  so 

to  speak,  scientific,  habitual,  clear  and  infal- 

217 


The  Unknown  Guest 

llble :  In  a  short  time,  having  nothing  more 
to  foretell,  it  would  die  of  inanition.  If,  for 
instance,  it  was  prophesied  to  me  that  I 
must  die  in  the  course  of  a  journey  in  Italy, 
I  should  naturally  abandon  the  journey; 
therefore  it  could  not  have  been  predicted 
to  me;  and  thus  all  life  would  soon  be  noth- 
ing but  inaction,  pause  and  abstention,  a 
sort  of  vast  desert  where  the  embryos  of 
still-born  events  would  be  gathered  in  heaps 
and  where  nothing  would  grow  save  per- 
haps one  or  two  more  or  less  fortunate  en- 
terprises and  the  little  insignificant  incidents 
which  no  one  would  trouble  to  avoid.  But 
these  again  are  questions  to  which  there  is 
no  solution;  and  we  will  not  pursue  them 
further. 


218 


CHAPTER    IV 

THE     ELBERFELD     HORSES 


CHAPTER    IV 

THE    ELBERFELD    HORSES 
I 

I  WILL  first  sum  up  as  briefly  as  pos- 
sible, for  whoso  may  still  be  ignorant 
of  them,  the  facts  which  it  is  necessary  to 
know  if  one  would  fully  understand  the 
marvellous  story  of  the  Elberfeld  horses. 
For  a  detailed  account,  I  can  refer  him  to 
Herr  Karl  Krall's  remarkable  work,  Den- 
kende  Tiere  (Leipsic,  19 12),  which  is  the 
first  and  principal  source  of  information 
amid  a  bibliography  that  is  already  assum- 
ing considerable  dimensions. 

Some  twenty  years  ago  there  lived  In 
Berlin  an  old  misanthrope  named  Wilhelm 
von  Osten.  He  was  a  man  with  a  small 
private  income,  a  little  eccentric  in  his  ways 
and  obsessed  by  one  idea,  the  intelligence  of 

animals.      He   began   by   undertaking   the 

221 


The  Unknown  Guest 

education  of  a  horse  that  gave  him  no  very 
definite  results.  But,  in  1900,  he  became 
the  owner  of  a  Russian  stallion  who,  under 
the  name  of  Hans,  to  which  was  soon 
added  the  Homeric  and  well-earned  prefix 
of  Kluge,  or  Clever,  was  destined  to  upset 
all  our  notions  of  animal  psychology  and  to 
raise  questions  that  rank  among  the  most 
unexpected  and  the  most  absorbing  prob- 
lems which  man  has  yet  encountered. 

Thanks  to  Von  Osten,  whose  patience, 
contrary  to  what  one  might  think,  was  in 
no  wise  angelic  but  resembled  rather  a 
frenzied  obstinacy,  the  horse  made  rapid 
and  extraordinary  progress.  This  progress 
is  very  aptly  described  by  Professor  E. 
Clarapede,  of  the  university  of  Geneva, 
who  says,  in  his  excellent  monograph  on  the 
Elberfeld  horses: 

"After  making  him  familiar  with  various 

common  ideas,  such  as  right,  left,  top,  bot- 

222 


The  Unknown  Guest 

torn  and  so  on,  his  master  began  to  teach 
him  arithmetic  by  the  intuitive  method. 
Hans  was  brought  to  a  table  on  which  were 
placed  first  one,  then  two,  then  several 
small  skittles.  Von  Osten,  kneeling  beside 
Hans,  uttered  the  corresponding  numbers, 
at  the  same  time  making  him  strike  as  many 
blows  with  his  hoof  as  there  were  skittles 
on  the  table.  Before  long,  the  skittles  were 
replaced  by  figures  written  on  a  blackboard. 
The  results  were  astonishing.  The  horse 
was  capable  not  only  of  counting  (that  Is 
to  say,  of  striking  as  many  blows  as  he  was 
asked),  but  also  of  himself  making  real 
calculations,  of  solving  little  problems.  .  .  . 
"But  Hans  could  do  more  than  mere 
sums:  he  knew  how  to  read;  he  was  a  musi- 
cian, distinguishing  between  harmonious 
and  dissonant  chords.  He  also  had  an  ex- 
traordinary memory :  he  could  tell  the  date 
of  each  day  of  the  current  week.  In  short, 
he  got  through  all  the  tasks  which  an  Intel- 

223 


The  Unknown  Guest 

ligent  schoolboy  of  fourteen  is  able  to  per- 
form." 

2 

The  rumour  of  these  curious  experiments 
soon  spread;  and  visitors  flocked  to  the 
little  stable-yard  in  which  Von  Osten  kept 
his  singular  pupil  at  work.  The  newspapers 
took  the  matter  up ;  and  a  fierce  controversy 
broke  forth  between  those  who  believed  in 
the  genuineness  of  the  phenomenon  and 
those  who  saw  no  more  In  it  than  a  bare- 
faced fraud.  A  scientific  committee  was 
appointed  in  1904,  consisting  of  professors 
of  psychology  and  physiology,  of  the  di- 
rector of  a  zoological  garden,  of  a  circus- 
manager  and  of  veterinary  surgeons  and 
cavalry-officers.  The  committee  discovered 
nothing  suspicious,  but  ventured  upon  no 
explanation.  A  second  committee  was  then 
appointed,  numbering  among  its  members 
Herr  Oskar  Pfungst,  of  the  Berlin  psycho- 
logical laboratory.    Herr  Pfungst,  after  a 

224 


The  Unknown  Guest 

long  series  of  experiments,  drew  up  a  volu- 
minous and  crushing  report,  in  which  he 
maintained  that  the  horse  was  gifted  with 
no  intelligence,  that  it  did  not  recognize 
either  letters  or  figures,  that  it  really  knew 
neither  how  to  calculate  nor  how  to  count, 
but  merely  obeyed  the  Imperceptible,  in- 
finitesimal and  unconscious  signs  which 
escaped  from  its  master. 

Public  opinion  veered  round  suddenly 
and  completely.  People  felt  a  sort  of  half- 
cowardly  relief  at  beholding  the  prompt 
collapse  of  a  miracle  which  was  threatening 
to  throw  confusion  into  the  self-satisfied 
little  fold  of  established  truths.  Poor  Von 
Osten  protested  In  vain:  no  one  listened  to 
him;  the  verdict  was  given.  He  never  re- 
covered from  this  official  blow ;  he  became 
the  laughing-stock  of  all  those  whom  he  had 
at  first  astounded;  and  he  died,  lonely  and 
embittered,  on  the  29th  of  June,  1909,  at 

the  age  of  seventy-one. 

225 


The  Unknown  Guest 

3 
But  he  left  a  disciple  whose  faith  had 

not  been  shaken  by  the  general  defection. 
A  well-to-do  Elberfeld  manufacturer,  Herr 
Krall,  had  taken  a  great  interest  in  Von 
Osten's  labours  and,  during  the  latter  years 
of  the  old  man's  life,  had  eagerly  followed 
and  even  on  occasion  directed  the  education 
of  the  wonderful  stallion.  Von  Osten  left 
Kluge  Hans  to  him  by  will;  on  his  own 
side,  Krall  had  bought  two  Arab  stallions, 
Muhamed  and  Zarif,  whose  prowess  soon 
surpassed  that  of  the  pioneer.  The  whole 
question  was  reopened,  events  took  a  vigor- 
ous and  decisive  turn  and,  instead  of  a 
weary,  eccentric  old  man,  discouraged  al- 
most to  sullenness  and  with  no  weapons  for 
the  struggle,  the  critics  of  the  miracle  found 
themselves  faced  by  a  new  adversary, 
young  and  high-spirited,  endowed  with  re- 
markable   scientific    instinct,    quick-witted, 

scholarly  and  well  able  to  defend  himself. 

226 


The  Unknown  Guest 

His  educational  methods  also  differ  ma- 
terially from  Von  Osten's.  It  was  a  strange 
thing,  but  deep  down  in  the  rather  queer, 
cross-grained  soul  of  the  old  enthusiast 
there  had  grown  up  gradually  a  sort  of 
hatred  for  his  four-legged  pupil.  He  felt 
the  stallion's  proud  and  nervous  will  resist- 
ing his  with  an  obstinacy  which  he  qualified 
as  diabolical.  They  stood  up  to  each  other 
like  two  enemies;  and  the  lessons  almost 
assumed  the  form  of  a  tragic  and  secret 
struggle  in  which  the  animal's  soul  rebelled 
against  man's  domination. 

Krall,  on  the  other  hand,  adores  his 
pupils;  and  this  atmosphere  of  affection  has 
in  a  manner  of  speaking  humanized  them. 
There  are  no  longer  those  sudden  move- 
ments of  wild  panic  which  reveal  the  ances- 
tral dread  of  man  in  the  quietest  and  best- 
trained  horse.  He  talks  to  them  long  and 
tenderly,  as  a  father  might  talk  to  his  chil- 
dren; and  we  have  the  strange  feeling  that 

227 


The  Unknown  Guest 

they  listen  to  all  that  he  says  and  understand 
it.  If  they  appear  not  to  grasp  an  explana- 
tion or  a  demonstration,  he  will  begin  it  all 
over  again,  analyze  it,  paraphrase  it  ten 
times  in  succession,  with  the  patience  of  a 
mother.  And  so  their  progress  has  been  in- 
comparably swifter  and  more  astounding 
than  that  of  old  Hans.  Within. a  fortnight 
of  the  first  lesson,  Muhamed  did  simple 
little  addition-  and  subtraction-sums  quite 
correctly.  He  had  learnt  to  distinguish  the 
tens  from  the  units,  striking  the  latter  with 
his  right  foot  and  the  former  with  his  left. 
He  knew  the  meaning  of  the  symbols  plus 
and  minus.  Four  days  later,  he  was  begin- 
ning multiplication  and  division.  In  four 
months'  time,  he  knew  how  to  extract  square 
and  cubic  roots;  and,  soon  after,  he  learnt  to 
spell  and  read  by  means  of  the  conventional 
alphabet  devised  by  Krall. 

This  alphabet,  at  the  first  glance,  seems 
rather  complicated.     For  that  matter,  it  is 

228 


The  Unknown  Guest 

only  a  makeshift;  but  how  could  one  find 
anything  better?  The  unfortunate  horse, 
who  is  almost  voiceless,  has  only  one  way 
in  which  to  express  himself:  a  clumsy  hoof, 
which  was  not  created  to  put  thought  into 
words.  It  became  necessary,  therefore,  to 
contrive,  as  in  table-turning,  a  special  alpha- 
bet, in  which  each  letter  is  designated  by  a 
certain  number  of  blows  struck  by  the  right 
foot  and  the  left.  Here  is  the  copy  handed 
to  visitors  at  Elberfeld  to  enable  them  to 
follow  the  horse's  operations: 


I 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

lO 

E 

N 

R 

s 

M 

c 

20 

A 

H 

L 

T 

A 

CH 

30 

I 

D 

G 

w 

J 

SCH 

40 

0 

B 

F 

K 

6 

50 

U 

V 

Z 

P 

ij 

60 

EI 

AU 

EU 

X 

Q 

229 


The  Unknown  Guest 

To  mark  the  letter  E,  for  Instance,  the 
stallion  will  strike  one  blow  with  his  left 
foot  and  one  with  his  right ;  for  the  letter  L, 
two  blows  with  his  left  foot  and  three  with 
his  right ;  and  so  on.  The  horses  have  this 
alphabet  so  deeply  imprinted  in  their  mem- 
ory that,  practically  speaking,  they  never 
make  a  mistake;  and  they  strike  their  hoofs 
so  quickly,  one  after  the  other,  that  at  first 
one  has  some  difiiculty  In  following  them. 

MuhamedandZarif — forZarlf'sprogress 
was  almost  equal  to  that  of  his  fellow-pupil, 
though  he  seems  a  little  less  gifted  from 
the  standpoint  of  higher  mathematics — 
Muhamed  and  Zarif  In  this  way  reproduce 
the  words  spoken  In  their  presence,  spell  the 
names  of  their  visitors,  reply  to  questions 
put  to  them  and  sometimes  make  little  ob- 
servations, little  personal  and  spontaneous 
reflections  to  which  we  shall  return  present- 
ly.   They  have  created  for  their  own  use  an 

inconceivably  fantastic  and  phonetic  system 

230 


The  Unknown  Guest 

of  spelling  which  they  stubbornly  refuse  to 
relinquish  and  which  often  makes  their 
writing  rather  difficult  to  read.  Deeming 
most  of  the  vowels  useless,  they  keep  almost 
exclusively  to  the  consonants;  thus  Zucker, 
for  instance,  becomes  Z  K  R,  Pferd,  P  F 
R  T  or  F  R  T,  and  so  on. 

I  will  not  set  forth  in  detail  the  many 
different  proofs  of  intelligence  lavished  by 
the  singular  inhabitants  of  this  strange 
stable.  They  are  not  only  first-class  cal- 
culators, for  whom  the  most  repellent  frac- 
tions and  roots  possess  hardly  any  secrets: 
they  distinguish  sounds,  colours,  and  scents, 
read  the  time  on  the  face  of  a  watch,  rec- 
ognize certain  geometrical  figures,  like- 
nesses and  photographs. 

Following  on  these  more  and  more  con- 
clusive experiments  and  especially  after  the 
publication  of  Krall's  great  work,  Den- 
kende  Tiere,  a  model  of  precision  and  ar- 
rangement, men's  minds  were  faced  with  a 

231 


The  Unknown  Guest 

clear  and  definite  problem  which,  this  time, 
could  not  be  challenged.  Scientific  commit- 
tees followed  one  another  at  Elberfeld; 
and  their  reports  became  legion.  Learned 
men  of  every  country — including  Dr.  Ed- 
inger,  the  eminent  Frankfort  neurologist; 
Professors  Dr.  H.  Kraemer  and  H.  E. 
Ziegler,  of  Stuttgart;  Dr.  Paul  Sarasin,  of 
Bale;  Professor  Ostwald,  of  Berlin;  Pro- 
fessor A.  Beredka,  of  the  Pasteur  Institute; 
Dr.  E.  Clarapede,  of  the  university  of 
Geneva;  Professor  Schoeller  and  Professor 
Gehrke,  the  natural  philosopher,  of  Berlin; 
Professor  Goldstein,  of  Darmstadt;  Pro- 
fessor von  Buttel-Reepen,  of  Oldenburg; 
Professor  William  Mackenzie,  of  Genoa; 
Professor  R.  Assagioli,  of  Florence;  Dr. 
Hartkopf,  of  Cologne;  Dr.  Freudenberg, 
of  Brussels;  Dr.  Ferrari,  of  Bologna,  etc., 
etc.,  for  the  list  Is  lengthening  daily — came 
to  study  on  the  spot  the  Inexplicable  phe- 
nomenon which  Dr.   Clarapede  proclaims 

232 


The  Unknown  Guest 

to  be  "the  most  sensational  event  that  has 
ever  happened  in  the  psychological  world." 
With  the  exception  of  two  or  three  scep- 
tics or  convinced  misoneists  and  of  those 
who  made  too  short  a  stay  at  Elberfeld,  all 
were  unanimous  in  recognizing  that  the 
facts  were  as  stated  and  that  the  experi- 
ments were  conducted  with  absolute  fair- 
ness. Disagreement  begins  only  when  it 
becomes  a  matter  of  commenting  on  them, 
interpreting  them  and  explaining  them. 

4 
To  complete  this  short  preamble,  it  is 
right  to  add  that,  for  some  time  past,  the 
case  of  the  Elberfeld  horses  no  longer 
stands  quite  alone.  There  exists  at  Mann- 
heim a  dog  of  a  rather  doubtful  breed  who 
performs  almost  the  same  feats  as  his 
equine  rivals.  He  is  less  advanced  than 
they  in  arithmetic,  but  does  little  additions, 
subtractions  and  multiplications  of  one  or 
two  figures  correctly.    He  reads  and  writes 

233 


The  Unknown  Guest 

by  tapping  with  his  paw,  In  accordance  with 
an  alphabet  which,  It  appears,  he  has 
thought  out  for  himself;  and  his  spelling 
also  is  simplified  and  phoneticized  to  the 
utmost.  He  distinguishes  the  colours  in  a 
bunch  of  flowers,  counts  the  money  in  a 
purse  and  separates  the  marks  from  the 
pfennigs.  He  knows  how  to  seek  and  find 
words  to  define  the  object  or  the  picture 
placed  before  him.  You  show  him,  for  in- 
stance, a  bouquet  in  a  vase  and  ask  him 
what  it  is. 

"A  glass  with  little  flowers,"  he  replies. 

And  his  answers  are  often  curiously 
spontaneous  and  original.  In  the  course  of 
a  reading-exercise  in  which  the  word 
Herbst,  autumn,  chanced  to  attract  atten- 
tion, Professor  William  Mackenzie  asked 
him  if  he  could  explain  what  autumn  was. 

"It  is  the  time  when  there  are  apples," 
Rolf  replied. 

On  the  same  occasion,  the  same  profes- 

234 


The  Unknown  Guest 

sor,  without  knowing  what  it  represented, 
held  out  to  him  a  card  marked  with  red 
and  blue  squares : 

"What's  this?" 

"Blue,  red,  lots  of  cubes,"  replied  the  dog. 

Sometimes  his  repartees  are  not  lacking 
In  humour. 

"Is  there  anything  you  would  like  me  to 
do  for  you?"  a  lady  of  his  acquaintance 
asked,  one  day. 

And  Master  Rolf  gravely  answered: 

"JVedelen,"  which  means,  "Wag  your 
tail!" 

Rolf,  whose  fame  Is  comparatively 
young,  has  not  yet,  like  his  illustrious  rivals 
of  the  Rhine  Province,  been  the  object  of 
minute  enquiries  and  copious  and  Innumer- 
able reports.  But  the  Incidents  which  I 
have  just  mentioned  and  which  are  vouched 
for  by  such  men  as  Professor  Mackenzie 
and  M.  Duchatel,  the  learned  and  clear- 
sighted vice-president  of  the  Soclete  Unl- 

235 


The  Unknown  Guest 

verselle  d'Etudes  Psychiques,^  who  went  to 
Mannheim  for  the  express  purpose  of 
studying  them,  appear  to  be  no  more  con- 
trovertible than  the  Elberfeld  occurrences, 
of  which  they  are  a  sort  of  replica  or  echo. 
It  is  not  unusual  to  find  these  coincidences 
amongst  abnormal  phenomena.  They 
spring  up  simultaneously  in  different  quar- 
ters of  the  globe,  correspond  with  one  an- 
other and  multiply  as  though  in  obedience 
to  a  word  of  command.  It  is  probable 
therefore  that  we  shall  see  still  more  man- 
ifestations of  the  same  class.  One  might 
almost  say  that  a  new  spirit  is  passing  over 
the  world  and,  after  awakening  in  man 
forces  whereof  he  was  not  aware,  is  now 
reaching  other  creatures  who  with  us  in- 
habit this  mysterious  earth,  on  which  they 
live,  suffer  and  die,  as  we  do,  without  know- 
ing why. 

^See  the  interesting  lecture  by  M.  Edmond  Duchatel, 
published  in  the  Annales  des  sciences  psychiques,  Oc- 
tober 1913. 

236 


The  Unknown  Guest 

5 
I  have  not  been  to  Mannheim,  but  I 

made  my  pilgrimage  to  Elberfeld  and 
stayed  long  enough  in  the  town  to  carry 
away  with  me  the  conviction  shared  by  all 
those  who  have  undertaken  the  journey. 

A  few  months  ago,  Herr  Krall,  whom  I 
had  promised  the  year  before  that  I  would 
come  and  see  his  wonderful  horses,  was  kind 
enough  to  repeat  his  invitation  in  a  more 
pressing  fashion,  adding  that  his  stable 
would  perhaps  be  broken  up  after  the  15th 
of  September  and  that,  in  any  case,  he 
would  be  obliged,  by  his  doctor's  orders, 
to  interrupt  for  an  indefinite  period  a  course 
of  training  which  he  found  exceedingly 
fatiguing. 

I  at  once  left  for  Elberfeld,  which,  as 
everybody  knows,  is  an  important  manufac- 
turing-town in  Rhenish  Prussia  and  is,  in 
fact,  more  quaint,  pleasing  and  picturesque 
than  one  might  expect.     I  had  long  since 


The  Unknown  Guest 

read  everything  that  had  been  published  on 
the  question;  and  I  was  wholly  persuaded 
of  the  genuineness  of  the  incidents.  Indeed 
it  would  be  difficult  to  have  any  doubts 
after  the  repeated  and  unremitting  supervi- 
sion and  verification  to  which  the  experi- 
ments are  subjected,  a  supervision  which  is 
of  the  most  rigorous  type,  often  hostile  and 
almost  ill-mannered.  As  for  their  inter- 
pretation, I  was  convinced  that  telepathy, 
that  is  to  say,  the  transmission  of  thought 
from  one  subconsciousness  to  another,  re- 
mained, however  strange  it  might  be  in  this 
new  region,  the  only  acceptable  theory;  and 
this  in  spite  of  certain  circumstances  that 
seemed  plainly  to  exclude  it.  In  default 
of  telepathy  proper,  I  inclined  towards  the 
mediumistic  or  subliminal  theory,  which 
was  very  ably  outlined  by  M.  de  Vesmes 
in  a  remarkable  lecture  delivered,  on  the 
22nd  of  December,  19 12,  before  the 
Societe    Universelle    d'Etudes    Psychiques. 

238 


The  Unknown  Guest 

It  is  true  that  telepathy,  especially  when 
carried  to  its  extreme  limits,  appeals  above 
all  to  the  subliminal  forces,  so  that  the  two 
theories  overlap  at  more  than  one  point 
and  it  is  often  difficult  to  make  out  where 
the  first  ends  and  the  second  begins.  But 
this  discussion  will  be  more  appropriate  a 
little  later. 

6 
I  found  Herr  Krall  in  his  goldsmith's- 
shop,  a  sort  of  palace  of  Golconda,  stream- 
ing and  glittering  with  the  most  precious 
pearls  and  stones  on  earth.  Herr  Krall, 
it  is  well  to  remember,  in  order  to  dispel 
any  suspicion  of  pecuniary  interest,  is  a  rich 
manufacturer  whose  family  for  three  gen- 
erations, from  father  to  son,  have  conducted 
one  of  the  most  important  jewellery-busi- 
nesses in  Germany.  His  researches,  so  far 
from  bringing  him  the  least  profit,  cost  him 
a  great  deal  of  money,  take  up  all  his  leisure 
and  some  part  of  the  time  which  he  would 

239 


The  Unknown  Guest 

otherwise  devote  to  his  business  and,  as 
usually  happens,  procure  him  from  his 
fellow-citizens  and  from  not  a  few  scientific 
men  more  annoyance,  unfair  criticism  and 
sarcasm  than  consideration  or  gratitude. 
His  work  is  preeminently  the  disinterested 
and  thankless  task  of  the  apostle  and 
pioneer. 

For  the  rest,  Herr  Krall,  though  his 
faith  is  active,  zealous  and  infectious,  has 
nothing  in  common  with  the  visionaries  or 
illuminati.  He  is  a  man  of  about  fifty, 
vigorous,  alert  and  enthusiastic,  but  at  the 
same  time  well-balanced;  accessible  to  every 
Idea  and  even  to  every  dream,  yet  practical 
and  methodical,  with  a  ballast  of  the  most 
Invincible  common-sense.  He  inspires  from 
the  outset  that  fine  confidence,  frank  and 
unrestrained,  which  instantly  disperses  the 
instinctive  doubt,  the  strange  uneasiness  and 
the  veiled  suspicion  that  generally  separate 
two  people  who  meet  for  the  first  time ;  and 

240 


The  Unknown  Guest 

one  welcomes  in  him,  from  the  very  depths 
of  one's  being,  the  honest  man,  the  staunch 
friend  whom  one  can  trust  and  whom  one 
is  sorry  not  to  have  known  earlier  in  life. 
We  go  together  through  the  streets  and 
along  the  bustling  quays  of  Elberfeld  to  the 
stable,  situated  at  a  few  hundred  steps  from 
the  shop.  The  horses  are  taking  the  air 
outside  the  doors  of  their  boxes,  in  the  yard 
shaded  by  a  lime-tree.  There  are  four  of 
them:  Muhamed,  the  most  intelligent,  the 
most  gifted  of  them  all,  the  great  mathe- 
matician of  the  party;  his  double,  Zarif,  a 
little  less  advanced,  less  tractable,  craftier, 
but  at  the  same  time  more  fanciful,  more 
spontaneous  and  capable  of  occasional  dis- 
concerting sallies;  next,  Hdnschen,  a  little 
Shetland  pony,  hardly  bigger  than  a  New- 
foundland dog,  the  street-urchin  of  the 
band,  always  quivering  with  excitement, 
roguish,  flighty,  uncertain  and  passionate, 
but  ready  in  a  moment  to  work  you  out  the 

241 


The  Unknown  Guest 

most  difficult  addition-  and  multiplication- 
sums  with  a  furious  scrape  of  the  hoof; 
and  lastly  the  latest  arrival,  the  plump  and 
placid  Berto,  an  imposing  black  stallion, 
quite  blind  and  lacking  the  sense  of  smell. 
He  has  been  only  a  few  months  at  school 
and  is  still,  so  to  speak,  in  the  preparatory 
class,  but  already  does — a  little  more  clums- 
ily, but  more  good-humouredly  and  con- 
scientiously— small  addition-  and  subtrac- 
tion-sums quite  as  well  as  many  a  child  of 
the  same  age. 

In  a  corner,  Kama,  a  young  elephant  two 
or  three  years  old,  about  the  size  of  an  out- 
rageously "blown"  donkey,  rolls  his  mis- 
chievous and  almost  knavish  eyes  under  the 
shelter  of  his  wide  ears,  each  resembling  a 
great  rhubarb-leaf,  and  with  his  stealthy,  in- 
sinuating trunk  carefully  picks  up  whatever 
he  considers  fit  to  eat,  that  is  to  say,  pretty 
well  everything  that  lies  about  on  the  stones. 

Great    things    were    hoped    of    him,    but 

242 


The  Unknown  Guest 

hitherto  he  has  disappointed  all  expecta- 
tions: he  is  the  dunce  of  the  establishment. 
Perhaps  he  is  too  young  still :  his  little  ele- 
phant-soul no  doubt  resembles  that  of  a 
sucking-babe's  which,  in  the  place  of  its  feet 
and  hands,  plays  with  the  stupendous  nose 
that  must  first  explore  and  question  the  uni- 
verse. It  is  impossible  to  grip  his  attention ; 
and,  when  they  set  out  before  him  his  al- 
phabet of  movable  letters,  instead  of  nam- 
ing those  which  are  pointed  out  to  him  he 
applies  himself  to  pulling  them  off  their 
stems,  in  order  to  swallow  them  surrepti- 
tiously. He  has  disheartened  his  kind 
master,  who,  pending  the  coming  of  the 
reason  and  wisdom  promised  by  the  pro- 
boscidian legends,  leaves  him  in  a  con- 
tented state  of  ignorance  made  more  bliss- 
ful by  an  almost  insatiable  appetite. 

7 
But  I  ask  to  see  the  great  pioneer,  Kluge 

Hans,  Clever  Hans.    He  is  still  alive.    He 

243 


The  Unknown  Guest 

is  old:  he  must  be  sixteen  or  seventeen;  but 
his  old  age,  alas,  is  not  exempt  from  the 
baneful  troubles  from  which  men  them- 
selves suffer  In  their  decline  1  Hans  has 
turned  out  badly,  it  appears,  and  is  never 
mentioned  save  in  ambiguous  terms.  An 
imprudent  or  vindictive  groom,  I  forget 
which,  having  introduced  a  mare  into  the 
yard,  Hans  the  Pure,  who  till  then  had  led 
an  austere  and  monkish  existence,  vowed 
to  celibacy,  science  and  the  chaste  delights 
of  figures,  Hans  the  Irreproachable  incon- 
tinently lost  his  head  and  cut  himself  open 
on  the  hanging-rail  of  his  stall.  They  had 
to  force  back  his  intestines  and  sew  up  his 
belly.  He  is  now  rusticating  miserably  in 
a  meadow  outside  the  town.  So  true  It  Is 
that  a  life  cannot  be  judged  except  at  its 
close  and  that  we  are  sure  of  nothing  until 
we  are  dead. 

8 
Before    the    sitting    begins,    while    the 

244 


The  Unknown  Guest 

master  Is  making  his  morning  inspection,  I 
go  up  to  Miihamed,  speak  to  him  and  pat 
him,  looking  straight  into  his  eyes  mean- 
while in  order  to  catch  a  sign  of  his  genius. 
The  handsome  creature,  well-bred  and  In 
hard  condition,  is  as  calm  and  trusting  as 
a  dog;  he  shows  himself  excessively  gra- 
cious and  friendly  and  tries  to  give  me  some 
huge  licks  and  mighty  kisses  which  I  do  my 
best  to  avoid  because  they  are  a  little  un- 
expected and  overdemonstratlve.  The  ex- 
pression of  his  limpid  antelope-eyes  is  deep, 
serious  and  remote,  but  it  differs  In  no  wise 
from  that  of  his  brothers  who,  for  thou- 
sands of  years,  have  seen  nothing  but 
brutality  and  Ingratitude  in  man.  If  we 
were  able  to  read  anything  there,  It  would 
not  be  that  Insufficient  and  vain  little  effort 
which  we  call  thought,  but  rather  an  Inde- 
finable, vast  anxiety,  a  tear-dimmed  regret 
for  the  boundless,  stream-crossed  plains 
where  his  sires  sported  at  will  before  they 

245 


The  Unknown  Guest 

knew  man's  yoke.  In  any  case,  to  see  him 
thus  fastened  by  a  halter  to  the  stable-door, 
beating  off  the  flies  and  absently  pawing  the 
cobbles,  Muhamed  is  nothing  more  than  a 
well-trained  horse  who  seems  to  be  waiting 
for  his  saddle  or  harness  and  who  hides  his 
new  secret  as  profoundly  as  all  the  others 
which  nature  has  buried  in  him. 

9 

But  they  are  summoning  me  to  take  my 
place  in  the  stable  where  the  lessons  are 
given.  It  is  a  small  room,  empty  and  bare, 
with  peat-moss  litter  bedding  and  white- 
washed walls.  The  horse  is  separated  from 
the  people  present  by  breast-high  wooden 
partitions.  Opposite  the  four-legged 
scholar  is  a  black-board,  nailed  to  the  wall; 
and  on  one  side  a  corn-bin  which  forms  a 
seat  for  the  spectators.  Muhamed  is  led 
in.  Krall,  who  is  a  little  nervous,  makes 
no  secret  of  his  uneasiness.    His  horses  are 

246 


The  Unknown  Guest 

fickle  animals,  uncertain,  capricious  and  ex- 
tremely sensitive.  A  trifle  disturbs  them, 
confuses  them,  puts  them  off.  At  such 
times,  threats,  prayers  and  even  the  irre- 
sistible charm  of  carrots  and  good  rye-bread 
are  useless.  They  obstinately  refuse  to  do 
any  work  and  they  answer  at  random. 
Everything  depends  on  a  whim,  the  state  of 
the  weather,  the  morning  meal  or  the  im- 
pression which  the  visitor  makes  upon  them. 
Still,  Krall  seems  to  know,  by  certain  im- 
perceptible signs,  that  this  is  not  going  to 
be  a  bad  day.  Muhamed  quivers  with  ex- 
citement, snorts  loudly  through  his  nostrils, 
utters  a  series  of  indistinct  little  whinnyings : 
excellent  symptoms,  it  appears,  I  take  my 
seat  on  the  corn-bin.  The  master,  stand- 
ing beside  the  black-board,  chalk  in  hand, 
introduces  me  to  Muhamed  in  due  form, 
as  to  a  human  being: 

"Muhamed,    attention!      This    is    your 

uncle" — pointing  to  me — "who  has  come 

247 


The  Unknown  Guest 

all  the  way  to  honour  you  with  a  visit. 
Mind  you  don't  disappoint  him.  His  name 
is  Maeterlinck,"  Krall  pronounces  the 
first  syllable  German-fashion :  Mah.  "You 
understand :  Maeterlinck.  Now  show  him 
that  you  know  your  letters  and  that  you  can 
spell  a  name  correctly,  like  a  clever  boy. 
Go  ahead,  we're  listening." 

Muhamed  gives  a  short  neigh  and,  on 
the  small,  movable  board  at  his  feet,  strikes 
first  with  his  right  hoof  and  then  with  his 
left  the  number  of  blows  which  correspond 
with  the  letter  M  in  the  conventional  al- 
phabet used  by  the  horses.  Then,  one  after 
the  other,  without  stopping  or  hesitating,  he 
marks  the  letters  ADRLINSH,  rep- 
resenting the  unexpected  aspect  which  my 
humble  name  assumes  in  the  equine  mind 
and  phonetics.  His  attention  is  called  to 
the  fact  that  there  is  a  mistake.  He  read- 
ily agrees  and  replaces  the  S  H  by  a  G 

and  then  the  G  by  a  K.     They  insist  that 

248 


The  Unknown  Guest 

he  must  put  a  T  Instead  of  the  D;  but 
Muhamed,  content  with  his  work,  shakes 
his  head  to  say  no  and  refuses  to  make 
any  further  corrections. 

lO 

I  assure  you  that  the  first  shock  is  rather 
disturbing,  however  much  one  expected  it. 
I  am  quite  aware  that,  when  one  describes 
these  things,  one  is  taken  for  a  dupe  too 
readily  dazzled  by  the  doubtless  childish 
illusion  of  an  ingeniously-contrived  scene. 
But  what  contrivances,  what  illusions  have 
we  here?  Do  they  lie  in  the  spoken  word? 
Why,  to  admit  that  the  horse  understands 
and  translates  his  master's  words  is  just  to 
accept  the  most  extraordinary  part  of  the 
phenomenon !  Is  it  a  case  of  surreptitious 
touches  or  conventional  signs?  However 
simple-minded  one  may  be,  one  would 
nevertheless  notice  them,  more  easily  than 
a   horse,   even   a   horse   of   genius.      Krall 

249 


The  Unknown  Guest 

never  lays  a  hand  on  the  animal;  he  moves 
all  round  the  little  stable,  which  contains 
no  appliances  of  any  sort;  for  the  most  part, 
he  stands  behind  the  horse,  which  Is  un- 
able to  see  him,  or  comes  and  sits  beside 
his  guest  on  the  Innocuous  corn-bin,  busying 
himself,  while  lecturing  his  pupil,  In  writ- 
ing up  the  minutes  of  the  lesson.  He  also 
welcomes  with  the  most  serene  readiness 
any  restrictions  or  tests  which  you  propose. 
I  assure  you  that  the  thing  itself  is  much 
simpler  and  clearer  than  the  suspicions  of 
the  arm-chair  critics  and  that  the  most  dis- 
trustful mind  would  not  entertain  the  faint- 
est idea  of  fraud  in  the  frank,  wholesome 
atmosphere  of  the  old  stable. 

"But,"  some  one  might  have  said, 
"Krall,  who  knew  that  you  were  coming 
to  Elberfeld,  had  of  course  thoroughly  re- 
hearsed his  little  exercise  in  spelling,  which 
apparently  is  only  an  exercise  in  memory." 

For  conscience'  sake,  though  I  did  not 

250 


The  Unknown  Guest 

look  upon  the  objection  as  serious,  I  sub- 
mitted it  to  Krall,  who  at  once  said: 

"Try  it  for  yourself.  Dictate  to  the 
horse  any  German  word  of  two  or  three 
syllables,  emphasizing  it  strongly.  I'll  go 
out  of  the  stable  and  leave  you  alone  with 
him." 

Behold  Muhamed  and  me  by  ourselves. 
I  confess  that  I  am  a  little  frightened.  I 
have  many  a  time  felt  less  uncomfortable  in 
the  presence  of  the  great  ones  or  the  kings 
of  the  earth.  Whom  am  I  dealing  with 
exactly?  However,  I  summon  my  courage 
and  speak  aloud 'the  first  word  that  occurs 
to  me,  the  name  of  the  hotel  at  which  I  am 
staying:  Weidenhof.  At  first,  Muhamed, 
who  seems  a  little  puzzled  by  his  master's 
absence,  appears  not  to  hear  me  and  does 
not  even  deign  to  notice  that  I  am  there. 
But  I  repeat  eagerly,  in  varying  tones  of 
voice,  by  turns  insinuating,  threatening,  be- 
seeching and  commanding: 

251 


The  Unknown  Guest 

"Weidenhof!  Weidenhof!  Welden- 
hof!" 

At  last,  my  mysterious  companion  sud- 
denly makes  up  his  mind  to  lend  me  his 
ears  and  straightway  blithely  raps  out  the 
following  letters,  which  I  write  down  on 
the  black-board  as  they  come: 

W  E  I  D  N  H  O  Z. 

It  is  a  magnificent  specimen  of  equine 
spelling !  Triumphant  and  bewildered,  I 
call  in  friend  Krall,  who,  accustomed  as  he 
is  to  the  prodigy,  thinks  it  quite  natural, 
but  knits  his  brows : 

"What's  this,  Muhamed?  You've  made 
a  mistake  again.  It's  an  F  you  want  at  the 
end  of  the  word,  not  a  Z.  Just  correct  it 
at  once,  please." 

And  the  docile  Muhamed,   recognizing 

his  blunder,  gives  the  three  blows  with  his 

right  hoof,  followed  by  the  four  blows  with 

252 


The  Unknown  Guest 

his  left,  which  represent  the  most  unexcep- 
tionable F  that  one  could  ask  for. 

Observe,  by  the  way,  the  logic  of  his 
phonetic  writing:  contrary  to  his  habit,  he 
strikes  the  mute  E  after  the  W,  because  it 
is  indispensable;  but,  finding  it  included  in 
the  D,  he  considers  it  superfluous  and  sup- 
presses it  with  a  high  hand. 

You  rub  your  eyes,  question  yourself,  ask 
yourself  in  the  presence  of  what  humanized 
phenomenon,  of  what  unknown  force,  of 
what  new  creature  you  stand.  Was  all  this 
what  they  hid  in  their  eyes,  those  silent 
brothers  of  ours?  You  blush  at  man's  long 
injustice.  You  look  around  you  for  some 
sort  of  trace,  obvious  or  subtle,  of  the  mys- 
tery. You  feel  yourself  attacked  in  your 
innermost  citadel,  where  you  held  yourself 
most  certain  and  most  impregnable.  You 
have  felt  a  breath  from  the  abyss  upon  your 
face.  You  would  not  be  more  astonished 
if  you  suddenly  heard  the  voice  of  the  dead. 

353 


The  Unknown  Guest 

But  the  most  astonishing  thing  is  that  you 
are  not  astonished  for  long.  We  all,  un- 
known to  ourselves,  live  in  the  expectation 
of  the  extraordinary;  and,  when  it  comes, 
it  moves  us  much  less  than  did  the  expecta- 
tion. It  is  as  though  a  sort  of  higher  in- 
stinct, which  knows  everything  and  is  not 
ignorant  of  the  miracles  that  hang  over  our 
heads,  were  reassuring  us  in  advance  and 
helping  us  to  make  an  easy  entrance  into 
the  regions  of  the  supernatural.  There  is 
nothing  to  which  we  grow  accustomed  more 
readily  than  to  the  marvellous;  and  it  is 
only  afterwards,  upon  reflection,  that  our 
intelligence,  which  knows  hardly  anything, 
appreciates  the  magnitude  of  certain  phe- 
nomena. 

II 
But  Muhamed  gives  unmistakable  signs 
of   impatience    to   show   that   he   has   had 
enough  of  spelling.    Thereupon,  as  a  diver- 
sion and  a  reward,  his  kind  master  suggests 

254 


The  Unknown  Guest 

the  extraction  of  a  few  square  and  cubic 
roots.  Muhamed  appears  delighted:  these 
are  his  favourite  problems;  for  he  takes  less 
interest  than  formerly  in  the  most  difficult 
multiplications  and  divisions.  He  doubtless 
thinks  them  beneath  him. 

Krall  therefore  writes  on  the  black- 
board various  numbers  of  which  I  did  not 
take  note.  Moreover,  as  nobody  now  con- 
tests the  fact  that  the  horse  works  them 
with  ease,  it  would  hardly  be  interesting  to 
reproduce  here  several  rather  grim  prob- 
lems of  which  numerous  variants  will  be 
found  in  the  accounts  and  reports  of  experi- 
ments signed  by  Drs.  Mackenzie  and 
Hartkopff,  by  Overbeck,  Clarapede  and 
many  others.  What  strikes  one  particu- 
larly is  the  facility,  the  quickness,  I  was 
almost  saying  the  joyous  carelessness  with 
which  the  strange  mathematician  gives  the 
answers.  The  last  figure  is  hardly  chalked 
upon  the  board  before  the  right  hoof  is 

255 


The  Unknown  Guest 

striking  off  the  units,  followed  immediately 
by  the  left  hoof  marking  the  tens.  There 
is  not  a  sign  of  attention  or  reflection;  one 
is  not  even  aware  of  the  exact  moment  at 
which  the  horse  looks  at  the  problem ;  and 
the  answer  seems  to  spring  automatically 
from  an  invisible  intelligence.  Mistakes 
are  rare  or  frequent  according  as  it  hap- 
pens to  be  a  good  or  bad  day  with  the 
horse;  but,  when  he  is  told  of  them,  he 
nearly  always  corrects  them.  Not  unsel- 
dom,  the  number  is  reversed:  47,  for  in- 
stance, becomes  74;  but  he  puts  it  right 
without  demur  when  asked. 

I  am  manifestly  dumbfounded;  but  per- 
haps these  problems  are  prepared  before- 
hand? If  they  were,  it  would  be  very  ex- 
traordinary, but  yet  less  surprising  than 
their  actual  solution.  Krall  does  not  read 
this  suspicion  in  my  eyes,  because  they  do 
not   show   it;   nevertheless,   to  remove  the 

least  shade  of  it,  he  asks  me  to  write  a 

256 


The  Unknown  Guest 

number  of  my  own  on  the  black-board  for 
the  horse  to  find  the  root. 

I  must  here  confess  the  humiliating  Ig- 
norance that  is  the  disgrace  of  my  life.  I 
have  not  the  faintest  Idea  of  the  mysteries 
concealed  within  those  recondite  and  com- 
plicated operations.  I  did  my  humanities 
hke  everybody  else;  but,  after  crossing  the 
useful  and  familiar  frontiers  of  multiplica- 
tion and  division  I  found  It  Impossible  to 
advance  any  farther  Into  the  desolate  re- 
gions, bristling  with  figures,  where  the 
square  and  cubic  roots  hold  sway,  together 
with  all  sorts  of  other  monstrous  powers, 
without  shapes  or  faces,  which  Inspired  me 
with  Invincible  terror.  All  the  persecutions 
of  my  excellent  Instructors  wore  themselves 
out  against  a  dead  wall  of  stolidity.  Suc- 
cessively disheartened,  they  left  me  to  my 
dismal  Ignorance,  prophesying  a  most  dreary 
future  for  me,  haunted  with  bitter  regrets. 
I  must  say  that,  until  now,  I  had  scarcely 

257 


The  Unknown  Guest 

experienced  the  effects  of  these  gloomy 
predictions;  but  the  hour  has  come  for  me 
to  expiate  the  sins  of  my  youth.  Never- 
theless, I  put  a  good  face  upon  it;  and,  tak- 
ing at  random  the  first  figures  that  suggest 
themselves  to  my  mind,  I  boldly  write  on 
the  black-board  an  enormous  and  most  dar- 
ing number,  Muhamed  remains  motion- 
less. Krall  speaks  to  him  sharply,  telling 
him  to  hurry  up.  Muhamed  lifts  his  right 
hoof,  but  does  not  let  it  fall.  Krall  loses 
patience,  lavishes  prayers,  promises  and 
threats;  the  hoof  remains  poised,  as 
though  to  bear  witness  to  good  intentions 
that  cannot  be  carried  out.  Then  my  host 
turns  round,  looks  at  the  problem  and  asks 
me: 

"Does  it  give  an  exact  root?" 

Exact  ?    What  does  he  mean  ?    Are  there 

roots  which  .   .    .  ?    But  I  dare  not  go  on: 

my   shameful    Ignorance    suddenly    flashes 

before  my  eyes.     Krall  smiles  indulgently 

258 


The  Unknown  Guest 

and,  without  making  any  attempt  to  sup- 
plement an  education  which  is  too  much  in 
arrears  to  allow  of  the  slightest  hope, 
laboriously  works  out  the  problem  and 
declares  that  the  horse  was  right  in  refus- 
ing to  give  an  impossible  solution. 

12 

Muhamed  receives  our  thanks  in  the 
form  of  a  lordly  portion  of  carrots;  and 
a  pupil  is  introduced  whose  attainments  do 
not  tower  so  high  above  mine :  Hanschen, 
the  little  pony,  quick  and  lively  as  a  big 
rat.  Like  me,  he  has  never  gone  beyond 
elementary  arithmetic;  and  so  we  shall  un- 
derstand each  other  better  and  meet  on 
equal  terms. 

Krall  asks  me  for  two  numbers  to  mul- 
tiply. I  give  him  63  X  7-  He  does  the 
sum  and  writes  the  product  on  the  board, 
followed  by  the  sign  of  division:  441  -=-  7. 
Instantly  Hanschen,  with  a  celerity  difficult 

•    259 


The  Unknown  Guest 

to  follow,  gives  three  blows,  or  rather  three 
violent  scrapes  with  his  right  hoof  and  six 
with  his  left,  which  makes  63,  for  we  must 
not  forget  that  in  German  they  say  not 
sixty-three,  but  three-and-sixty.  We  con- 
gratulate him;  and,  to  evince  his  satisfac- 
tion, he  nimbly  reverses  the  number  by 
marking  36  and  then  puts  it  right  again  by 
scraping  63.  He  is  evidently  enjoying 
himself  and  juggling  with  the  figures.  And 
additions,  subtractions,  multiplications  and 
divisions  follow  one  after  the  other,  with 
figures  supplied  by  myself,  so  as  to  remove 
any  idea  of  collusion.  Hanschen  seldom 
blunders;  and,  when  he  does,  we  receive  a 
very  clear  impression  that  his  mistake  is 
voluntary:  he  is  like  a  mischievous  school- 
boy playing  a  practical  joke  upon  his  mas- 
ter. The  solutions  fall  thick  as  hail  upon 
the  little  spring-board;  the  correct  answer  is 
released  by  the  question  as  though  you  w^ere 
pressing  the  button  of  an  electric  push.  The 

260  ■ 


The  Unknown  Guest 

pony's  flippancy  is  as  surprising  as  his  skill. 
But  in  this  unruly  flippancy,  In  this  hasti- 
ness which  seems  Inattentive  there  Is  never- 
theless a  fixed  and  permanent  idea.  Han- 
schen  paws  the  ground,  kicks,  prances, 
tosses  his  head,  looks  as  if  he  cannot  keep 
still,  but  never  leaves  his  spring-board.  Is 
he  Interested  In  the  problems,  does  he  en- 
joy them?  It  Is  impossible  to  say;  but  he 
certainly  has  the  appearance  of  one  accom- 
plishing a  duty  or  a  piece  of  work  which 
we  do  not  discuss,  which  Is  important,  neces- 
sary and  inevitable. 

But  the  lesson  suddenly  ends  with  a  joke 
carried  rather  too  far  by  the  pupil,  who 
catches  his  good  master  by  the  seat  of  his 
trousers,  into  which  he  plants  disrespectful 
teeth.  He  Is  severely  reprimanded,  de- 
prived of  his  carrots  and  sent  back  in  dis- 
grace to  his  private  apartments. 

13 
Next  comes  Berto,  who  Is  like  a  big,  sleek 

261 


The  Unknown  Guest 

Norman  horse.  He  makes  the  calm,  digni- 
fied, peaceful  entrance  of  a  blind  giant.  His 
large,  dark,  brilliant  eyes  are  quite  dead,  de- 
prived of  any  reflex  power.  He  feels  about 
with  his  hoof  for  the  board  on  which  he  is 
to  rap  his  answers.  He  has  not  yet  gone 
beyond  the  rudiments  of  mathematics;  and 
the  early  part  of  his  education  was  particu- 
larly difficult.  They  managed  to  make  him 
understand  the  value  and  meaning  of  the 
numbers  and  of  the  addition-  and  multipli- 
cation-signs by  means  of  little  taps  on  his 
sides.  Krall  speaks  to  him  as  a  father 
might  speak  to  the  youngest  of  his  sons. 
He  explains  to  him  fondly  the  easy  sums 
which  I  suggest  his  doing:  two  plus  three, 
eight  minus  four,  four  times  three;  he  says: 

"Mind !  It's  not  plus  three  or  minus 
three  this  time,  but  four  multiplied  by 
three!" 

Berto  hardly  ever  makes  a  mistake. 
When  he  does  not  understand  the  question, 

262 


The  Unknown  Guest 

he  waits  for  it  to  be  written  with  the  finger 
on  his  side;  and  the  careful  way  in  which 
he  works  it  out  like  some  backward  and 
afflicted  child  is  an  infinitely  pathetic  sight. 
He  is  much  more  zealous  and  conscientious 
than  his  fellow-pupils;  and  we  feel  that,  in 
the  darkness  wherein  he  dwells,  this  work 
is,  next  to  his  meals,  the  only  spark  of  light 
and  interest  in  his  existence.  He  will  cer- 
tainly never  rival  Muhamed,  for  instance, 
who  is  the  arithmetical  prodigy,  the  Inaudi, 
of  horses;  but  he  is  a  valuable  and  living 
proof  that  the  theory  of  unconscious  and 
imperceptible  signs,  the  only  one  which  the 
German  theorists  have  hitherto  seriously 
considered,  is  now  clearly  untenable. 

I  have  not  yet  spoken  of  Zarlf.  He  is 
not  in  the  best  of  tempers;  and  besides,  in 
arithmetic,  he  is  only  a  less  learned  and 
more  capricious  Muhamed.  He  answers 
most  of  the  questions  at  random,  stubbornly 

raising  his  foot  and  declining  to  lower  It,  so 

263 


The  Unknown  Guest 

as  clearly  to  mark  his  disapproval;  but  he 
solves  the  last  problem  correctly  when  he  is 
promised  a  panful  of  carrots  and  no  more 
lessons  for  that  morning.  The  groom  en- 
ters to  lead  him  away  and  makes  some 
movement  or  other  at  which  the  horse 
starts,  rears  and  shies. 

'That's  his  bad  conscience,"  says  Krall, 
gravely. 

And  the  expression  assumes  a  singular 
meaning  and  importance  in  this  hybrid  at- 
mosphere, steeped  in  an  indefinable  some- 
thing from  another  world. 

But  it  is  half-past  one,  the  sacred  Ger- 
man dinner-hour.  The  horses  are  taken 
back  to  their  racks  and  the  men  separate, 
wishing  one  another  the  inevitable  Mahl- 
zeit. 

As  he  walks  with  me  along  the  quays  of 
the  black  and  muddy  Wupper,  Krall  says : 

"It  is  a  pity  that  you  did  not  see  Zarif  in 
one  of  his  better  moods.     He  is  sometimes 

264 


The  Unknown  Guest 

more  startling  than  Muhamed  and  has 
given  me  two  or  three  surprises  that  seem 
incredible.  One  morning,  for  instance,  I 
came  to  the  stable  and  was  preparing  to 
give  him  his  lesson  in  arithmetic.  He  was 
no  sooner  in  front  of  the  spring-board  than 
he  began  to  stamp  with  his  foot.  I  left  him 
alone  and  was  astounded  to  hear  a  whole 
sentence,  an  absolutely  human  sentence, 
come  letter  by  letter  from  his  hoof :  'Albert 
has  beaten  Hanschen,'  was  what  he  said 
to  me  that  day.  Another  time,  I  wrote 
down  from  his  dictation,  'Hanschen  has 
bitten  Kama.'  Like  a  child  seeing  its 
father  after  an  absence,  he  felt  the  need  to 
inform  me  of  the  little  doings  of  the 
stable;  he  provided  me  with  the  artless 
chronicle  of  a  humble  and  uneventful  life." 
Krall,  for  that  matter,  living  in  the  midst 
of  his  miracle,  seems  to  think  this  quite 
natural  and  almost  inevitable.  I,  who  have 
been  immersed  in  it  for  only  a  few  hours, 

265 


The  Unknown  Guest 

accept  it  almost  as  calmly  as  he  does.  I 
believe  without  hesitation  what  he  tells 
me;  and,  In  the  presence  of  this  phenome- 
non which,  for  the  first  time  In  man's  exist- 
ence, gives  us  a  sentence  that  has  not 
sprung  from  a  human  brain,  I  ask  myself 
whither  we  are  tending,  where  we  stand  and 
what  lies  ahead  of  us.   .    .    . 

After  dinner,  the  experiments  begin 
again,  for  my  host  Is  untiring.  First  of  all, 
pointing  to  me,  he  asks  Muhamed  If  he  re- 
members what  his  uncle's  name  is.  The 
horse  raps  out  an  H.  Krall  is  astonished 
and  utters  fatherly  reprimands: 

"Come,  take  care!  You  know  It's  not 
an  H." 

The  horse  raps  out  an  E.  Krall  becomes 
a  little  impatient:  he  threatens,  he  Implores, 
he  promises  In  turns  carrots  and  the  direst 
punishments,   such  as  sending  for  Albert, 

266 


The  Unknown  Guest 

the  groom,  who,  on  special  occasions,  recalls 
idle  and  inattentive  pupils  to  a  sense  of 
duty  and  decorum,  for  Krall  himself  never 
chastises  his  horses,  lest  he  should  lose  their 
friendship  or  their  confidence.  So  he  con- 
tinues his  reproaches : 

"Come  now,  are  you  going  to  be  more 
careful  and  not  rap  out  your  letters  any- 
how?" 

Muhamed  obstinately  goes  his  own  way 
and  strikes  an  R.  Then  Krall's  open  face 
lights  up: 

"He's  right,"  he  says.  "You  under- 
stand: HER,  standing  for  Herr.  He 
wanted  to  give  you  the  title  to  which  every 
man  wearing  a  top  hat  or  a  bowler  has  the 
right.  He  does  it  only  very  rarely  and  I 
had  forgotten  all  about  it.  He  probably 
heard  me  call  you  Herr  Maeterlinck  and 
wanted  to  get  it  perfectly.  This  special 
politeness  and  this  excess  of  zeal  augur  a 
particularly  good  lesson.    You've  done  very 

267 


The  Unknown  Guest 

well,  Muhamed,  my  child;  you've  done  very 
well  and  I  beg  your  pardon.  Now  kiss  me 
and  go  on." 

But  Muhamed,  after  giving  his  master  a 
hearty  kiss,  still  seems  to  be  hesitating. 
Then  Krall,  to  put  him  on  the  right  track, 
observes  that  the  first  letter  of  my  name  is 
the  same  as  the  first  letter  of  his  own. 
Muhamed  strikes  a  K,  evidently  thinking 
of  his  master's  name.  At  last,  Krall  draws 
a  big  M  on  the  black-board,  whereupon  the 
horse,  like  one  suddenly  remembering  a 
word  which  he  could  not  think  of,  raps  out, 
one  after  the  other  and  without  stopping, 
the  letters  M  A  Z  R  L  K,  which,  stripped 
of  useless  vowels,  represent  the  curious  cor- 
ruption which  my  name  has  undergone, 
since  the  morning,  in  a  brain  that  is  not  a 
human  brain.  He  is  told  that  this  is  not 
correct.  He  seems  to  agree,  gropes  about 
a  little  and  writes,  MARZLEGK. 
Krall  repeats  my  name  and  asks  which  is 

268 


The  Unknown  Guest 

the  first  letter  to  be  altered.  The  stallion 
marks  an  R. 

"Good,  but  what  letter  will  you  put  in- 
stead?" 

Muhamed  strikes  an  N. 

"No,  do  be  careful!" 

He  strikes  a  T. 

"Very  good,  but  in  what  place  will  the 
T  come?" 

"In  the  third,"  replies  the  horse;  and 
the  corrections  continue  until  my  patrony- 
mic comes  out  of  its  strange  adventure  al- 
most unscathed. 

And  the  spelling,  the  questioning,  the 
sums,  the  problems  are  resumed  and  follow 
upon  one  another,  as  wonderful,  as  be- 
wildering as  before,  but  already  a  little 
dimmed  by  familiarity,  like  any  other  pro- 
longed miracle.  It  is  important,  besides, 
to  notice  that  the  instances  which  I  have 
given  are  not  to  be  classed  among  the  most 

269 


The  Unknown  Guest 

remarkable  feats  of  our  magic  horses.  To- 
day's is  a  good  ordinary  lesson,  a  respect- 
able lesson,  not  illumined  by  flashes  of 
genius.  But  in  the  presence  of  other  wit- 
nesses the  horses  performed  more  start- 
ling exploits  which  broke  down  even  more 
decisively  the  barrier,  which  is  undoubtedly 
an  imaginary  one,  between  animal  and  hu- 
man nature.  One  day,  for  instance,  Zarif, 
the  scamp  of  the  party,  suddenly  stopped 
in  the  middle  of  his  lesson.  They  asked 
him  the  reason. 

"Because  I  am  tired." 

Another  time,  he  answered: 

'Tain  in  my  leg." 

They  recognize  and  identify  pictures 
shown  to  them,  distinguish  colours  and 
scents.  I  have  made  a  point  of  stating  only 
what  I  saw  with  my  own  eyes  and  heard 
with  my  own  ears;  and  I  declare  that  I 
have  done  so  with  the  same  scrupulous  ac- 
curacy as  though  I  were  reporting  a  crim- 

270 


The  Unknown  Guest 

inal  trial  in  which  a  man's  life  depended 
on  my  evidence. 

But  I  was  practically  convinced  of  the 
truth  of  the  incidents  before  going  to  Elber- 
feld;  and  it  was  not  to  check  them  that  I 
made  the  journey.  I  was  anxious  to  make 
certain  if  the  telepathic  theory,  which  was 
the  only  one  that  I  considered  admissible, 
would  withstand  the  tests  which  I  intended 
to  apply  to  It.  I  opened  my  mind  on  the 
subject  to  Krall,  who  at  first  did  not  quite 
grasp  what  I  was  asking.  Like  most  men 
who  have  not  made  a  special  study  of  these 
questions,  he  Imagined  that  telepathy  meant 
above  all  a  deliberate  and  conscious  trans- 
mission of  thought;  and  he  assured  me  that 
he  never  made  any  effort  to  transmit  his 
and  that,  for  the  most  part,  the  horses  gave 
a  reply  which  was  the  exact  opposite  of 
what  he  was  expecting.  I  did  not  doubt 
this  for  a  moment;  In  fact,  direct  and  de- 
liberate transmission   of  thought   Is,   even 

271 


The  Unknown  Guest 

among  men,  a  very  rare,  difficult  and  un- 
certain phenomenon,  whereas  Involuntary, 
unpremeditated  and  unsuspected  communi- 
cations between  one  subconsciousness  and 
another  can  no  longer  be  denied  except  by 
those  who  of  set  purpose  Ignore  studies  and 
experiments  that  are  within  the  reach  of 
any  one  who  will  take  the  trouble  to  en- 
gage In  them.  I  was  persuaded  therefore 
that  the  horses  acted  exactly  like  the 
"tipping-tables"  which  simply  translate  the 
subliminal  ideas  of  one  or  other  of  those 
present  by  the  aid  of  conventional  little 
taps.  When  all  is  said,  it  Is  much  less  sur- 
prising to  see  a  horse  than  a  table  lift  its 
foot  and  much  more  natural  that  the  liv- 
ing substance  of  an  animal  rather  than  the 
Inert  matter  of  a  thing  should  be  sensitive 
and  susceptible  to  the  mysterious  influence 
of  a  medium.  I  knew  quite  well  that  ex- 
periments had  been  made  in  order  to  elim- 
inate this  theory.    People,  for  instance,  pre- 

272 


The  Unknown  Guest 

pared  a  certain  number  of  questions  and 
placed  them  in  sealed  envelopes.  Then,  on 
entering  the  presence  of  the  horse,  they 
would  take  one  of  the  envelopes  at  ran- 
dom, open  it  and  write  down  the  problem 
on  the  black-board;  and  Muhamed  or 
Zarif  would  answer  with  the  same  facility 
and  the  same  readiness  as  though  the  solu- 
tion had  been  known  to  all  the  onlookers. 
But  was  it  really  unknown  to  their  subcon- 
sciousness? Who  could  say  for  certain? 
Tests  of  this  kind  require  extraordinary 
precautions  and  a  special  dexterity;  for  the 
action  of  the  subconsciousness  is  so  subtle, 
takes  such  unexpected  turns,  delves  in  the 
museum  of  so  many  forgotten  treasures 
and  operates  at  such  distances  that  one  is 
never  sure  of  escaping  it.  Were  those  pre- 
cautions taken?  I  was  not  convinced  that 
they  were;  and,  without  pretending  to  de- 
cide the  question,  I  said  to  myself  that  my 
blissful    ignorance   of   mathematics   might 

273 


The  Unknown  Guest 

perhaps  be  of  service  In  shedding  light  upon 
some  part  of  It. 

For  this  Ignorance,  however  deplorable 
from  other  points  of  view,  gave  me  a  rare 
advantage  in  this  case.     It  was  In  fact  ex- 
tremely unlikely  that  my  subliminal  con- 
sciousness, which  had  never  known  what  a 
cubic  root  was  or  the  root  of  any  other 
power,  could  help  the  horse.     I  therefore 
took  from  a  table  a  list  containing  several 
problems,  all  different  and  all  equally  un- 
pleasant-looking, covered  up  the  solutions, 
asked  Krall  to  leave  the  stable  and,  when 
alone  with  Zarif,  copied  out  one  of  them 
on  the  black-board.     In  order  not  to  over- 
load these  pages  with  details  which  would 
only  be  a  repetition  of  one  another,  I  will 
at  once  say  that  none  of  the  antitelepathic 
tests  succeeded  that  day.    It  was  the  end  of 
the  lesson  and  late  In  the  afternoon;  the 
horses  were  tired  and  Irritable ;  and,  whether 
Krall  was  there  or  not,  whether  the  problem 

274 


The  Unknown  Guest 

was  elementary  or  difficult,  they  gave  only 
absurd  replies,  wilfully  "putting  their  foot 
in  it,"  as  one  might  say  with  very  good 
reason.  But,  next  morning,  on  resuming 
their  task,  when  I  proceeded  as  described 
above,  Muhamed  and  Zarif,  doubtless  in 
a  better  temper  and  already  more  accus- 
tomed to  their  new  examiner,  gave  in  rapid 
succession  correct  answers  to  nearly  every 
problem  set  them.  I  am  bound  in  fairness 
to  say  that  there  was  no  appreciable  differ- 
ence between  these  results  and  those  which 
are  obtained  in  the  presence  of  Krall  or 
other  onlookers  who,  consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously, are  already  aware  of  the  answer 
required. 

I  next  thought  of  another  and  much  sim- 
pler test,  but  one  which,  by  virtue  of  its 
very  simplicity,  could  not  be  exposed  to  any 
elaborate  and  far-fetched  suspicions.  I  saw 
on  one  of  the  shelves  in  the  stable  a  parcel 
of  cards,  about  the  size  of  an  octavo  volume, 

275 


The  Unknown  Guest 

each  bearing  an  arabic  numeral  on  one  of  its 
sides.  I  once  more  asked  my  good  friend 
Krall,  whose  courtesy  is  inexhaustible,  to 
leave  me  alone  with  his  pupil.  I  then 
shuffled  the  cards  and  put  three  of  them  in 
a  row  on  the  spring-board  in  front  of  the 
horse,  without  looking  at  them  myself. 
There  was  therefore,  at  that  moment,  not  a 
human  soul  on  earth  who  knew  the  figures 
spread  at  the  feet  of  my  companion,  this 
creature  so  full  of  mystery  that  already  I 
no  longer  dare  call  him  an  animal.  Without 
hesitation  and  unasked,  he  rapped  out  cor- 
rectly the  number  formed  by  the  cards.  The 
experiment  succeeded,  as  often  as  I  cared 
to  try  it,  with  Hanschen,  Muhamed  and 
Zarif  alike.  Muhamed  did  even  more :  as 
each  figure  was  of  a  different  colour,  I  asked 
him  to  tell  me  the  colour — of  which  I  my- 
self was  absolutely  ignorant — of  the  first 
letter  on  the  right.  With  the  aid  of  the  con- 
ventional alphabet,  he  replied  that  it  was 

276 


The  Unknown  Guest 

blue,   which   proved  to  be  the  case.     Of 
course,   I   ought  to   have  multiplied  these 
experiments  and  made  them  more  exhaus- 
tive  and   complicated  by   combining,  with 
the  aid  of  the  cards  and  under  the  same  con- 
ditions, exercises  in  multiplication,  division 
and  the  extracting  of  roots.     I  had  not  the 
time;  but,  a  few  days  after  I  left,  the  sub- 
ject was  resumed  and  completed  by  Dr.  H. 
Hamel.     I  will  sum  up  his  report  of  the 
experiments :  the  doctor,  alone  in  the  stable 
with  the  horse    (Krall  was  away,   travel- 
ling),  puts  down  on  the  black-board  the 
sign  +  and  then  places  before  and  after 
this  sign,  without  looking  at  either  of  them, 
a  card  marked  with  a  figure  which  he  does 
not  know.    He  next  asks  Muhamed  to  add 
up  the  two  numbers.     Muhamed  at  first 
gives  a  few  heedless  taps  with  his  hoof.  He 
is  called  to  order  and  requested  to  be  seri- 
ous and  to  attend.     He  then  gives  fifteen 
distinct  taps.    The  doctor  next  replaces  the 

277 


The  Unknown  Guest 

sign  -|~  by  X  and,  again  without  looking 
at  them,  places  two  cards  on  the  black- 
board and  asks  the  horse  not  to  add  up  the 
two  figures  this  time,  but  to  multiply  them. 
Muhamed  taps  out,  "27,"  which  is  right, 
for  the  black-board  says,  "9  X  3-"  The 
same  success  follows  with  other  multiplica- 
tion-sums: 9  X  2,  8  X  6.  Then  the  doctor 
takes  from  an  envelope  a  problem  of  which 

he  does  not  know  the  solution :  ^^7890481. 
Muhamed  replies,  "53."  The  doctor  looks 
at  the  back  of  the  paper:  once  more,  the 
answer  is  perfectly  correct. 

16 

Does  this  mean  that  every  risk  of 
telepathy  is  done  away  with?  It  would 
perhaps  be  rash  to  make  a  categorical  as- 
sertion. The  power  and  extent  of  telepathy 
are  as  yet,  we  cannot  too  often  repeat,  in- 
definite, indiscernible,  untraceable  and  un- 
limited.    We  have  but  quite  lately  discov- 

278 


The  Unknown  Guest 

ered  it,  we  know  only  that  its  existence  can 
no  longer  be  denied;  but,  as  for  all  the  rest, 
we  are  at  much  the  same  stage  as  that 
whereat  Galvani  was  when  he  gav^e  life 
to  the  muscles  of  his  dead  frogs  with  two 
little  plates  of  metal  which  roused  the 
jeers  of  the  scientists  of  his  time,  but  con- 
tained the  germ  of  all  the  wonders  of  elec- 
tricity. 

Nevertheless,  as  regards  telepathy  in  the 
sense  in  which  we  understand  and  know  it 
to-day,  my  mind  is  made  up.  I  am  per- 
suaded that  it  is  not  in  this  direction  that  we 
must  seek  for  an  explanation  of  the  phe- 
nomenon; or,  if  we  are  determined  to  find 
it  there,  the  explanation  becomes  compli- 
cated with  so  many  subsidiary  mysteries 
that  it  is  better  to  accept  the  prodigy  as  it 
stands,  in  its  original  obscurity  and  sim- 
plicity. When,  for  instance,  I  was  copying 
out  one  of  the  grisly  problems  which  I  have 

mentioned,  it  is  quite  certain  that  my  con- 

279 


The  Unknown  Guest 

sclous  intelligence  could  make  neither  head 
nor  tall  of  It.  I  did  not  so  much  as  know 
what  it  meant  or  whether  the  exponent 
3.4.5  called  for  a  multiplication,  a  divi- 
sion or  some  other  mathematical  operation 
which  I  did  not  even  try  to  imagine;  and, 
rack  my  memory  as  I  may,  I  cannot  remem- 
ber any  moment  in  my  life  when  I  knew 
more  about  it  than  I  do  now.  We  should 
therefore  have  to  admit  that  my  subliminal 
self  is  a  born  mathematician,  quick,  infal- 
lible and  endowed  with  boundless  learning. 
It  Is  possible  and  I  feel  a  certain  pride  at 
the  thought.  But  the  theory  simply  shifts 
the  miracle  by  making  it  pass  from  the 
horse's  soul  to  mine;  and  the  miracle  be- 
comes no  clearer  by  the  transfer,  which,  for 
that  matter,  does  not  sound  probable.  I 
need  hardly  add  that,  a  fortiori^  Dr. 
Hamel's  experiments  and  many  others 
which  I  have  not  here  the  space  to  describe 

finally  dispose  of  the  theory. 

280 


The  Unknown  Guest 

17 
.     Let  us  see  how  those  who  have  inter- 
ested   themselves    in    these    extraordinary 
manifestations  have   attempted  to  explain 
them. 

As  we  go  along,  we  will  just  shear 
through  the  feeble  undergrowth  of  childish 
theories.  I  shall  not,  therefore,  linger  over 
the  suggestions  of  cheating,  of  manifest 
signs  addressed  to  the  eye  or  ear,  of  elec- 
trical installations  that  are  supposed  to 
control  the  answers,  nor  other  idle  tales  of 
an  excessively  clumsy  character.  To  realize 
their  inexcusable  inanity  we  have  but  to 
spend  a  few  minutes  in  the  honest  Elber- 
feld  stable. 

At  the  beginning  of  this  essay,  I  men- 
tioned the  attack  made  by  Herr  Pfungst. 
Herr  Pfungst,  the  reader  will  remember, 
claims  to  prove  that  all  the  horse's  replies 
are  determined  by  imperceptible  and  prob- 
ably unconscious  movement  on  the  part  of 

281 


The  Unknown  Guest 

the  person  putting  the  questions.  This  in- 
terpretation, which  falls  to  the  ground, 
like  all  the  others,  in  the  face  of  the  actual 
facts,  would  not  deserve  serious  discussion, 
were  it  not  that  the  Berlin  psychologist's 
report  created  an  immense  sensation  some 
years  ago  and  has  succeeded  in  intimidating 
the  greater  part  of  the  official  German 
scientific  world  to  this  day.  It  is  true  that 
the  report  in  question  is  a  monument  of  use- 
less pedantry,  but  we  are  none  the  less 
bound  to  admit  that,  such  as  it  was,  it  an- 
nihilated poor  Von  Osten,  who,  being  no 
controversialist  and  not  knowing  how  to 
proclaim  the  truth  which  was  struggling 
for  utterance,  died  in  gloom  and  solitude. 

To  make  an  end  of  this  cumbrous  and 
puerile  theory,  is  it  necessary  to  emphasize 
again  that  experiments  in  which  the  animal 
does  not  see  the  questioner  are  as  regularly 
successful  as  the  others?    Krall,  if  you  ask 

him,  will  stand  behind  the  horse,  will  speak 

282 


The  Unknown  Guest 

from  the  end  of  the  room,  will  leave  the 
stable  altogether;  and  the  results  are  just 
the  same.  They  are  the  same  again  when 
the  tests  are  made  in  the  dark  or  when 
the  animal's  head  is  covered  with  a  close- 
fitting  hood.  They  do  not  vary  either  in 
the  case  of  Berto,  who  is  stone-blind,  or 
when  any  other  person  whatever  sets  the 
problem  in  Krall's  absence.  Will  it  be 
maintained  that  this  outsider  or  that 
stranger  is  acquainted  beforehand  with  the 
imperceptible  signs  that  are  to  dictate  the 
solution  which  he  himself  often  does  not 
know? 

But  what  Is  the  use  of  prolonging  this 
fight  against  a  cloud  of  smoke?  None  of 
It  can  bear  examination;  and  it  calls  for  a 
genuine  effort  of  the  will  to  set  one's  self 
seriously  to  refute  such  pitiful  objections. 

i8 

On  the  ground  thus  cleared  and  at  the 

283 


The  Unknown  Guest 

portal  of  this  unlooked-for  riddle,  which 
comes  to  disturb  our  peace  in  a  region 
which  we  thought  to  be  finally  explored  and 
conquered,  there  are  only  two  ways,  if  not 
of  explaining,  at  least  of  contemplating  the 
phenomenon :  to  admit  purely  and  simply 
the  almost  human  intelligence  of  the  horse, 
or  to  have  recourse  to  an  as  yet  very  vague 
and  indefinite  theory  which,  for  lack  of  a 
better  designation,  we  will  call  the  medium- 
istic  or  subliminal  theory  and  of  which  we 
will  strive  presently — and  no  doubt  vainly 
— to  dispel  the  grosser  darkness.  But, 
whatever  interpretation  we  adopt,  we  are 
bound  to  recognize  that  it  plunges  us  into 
a  mystery  which  is  equally  profound  and 
equally  astonishing  on  either  side,  one 
directly  related  to  the  greatest  mysteries 
that  overwhelm  us;  and  It  is  open  to  us  to 
accept  It  with  resignation  or  rejoicing,  ac- 
cording as  we  prefer  to  llv^e   in  a  world 

wherein  everything  is  within  the  reach  of 

284 


The  Unknown  Guest 

our  intelligence  or  a  world  wherein  every- 
thing is  incomprehensible. 

As  for  Krall,  he  does  not  doubt  for  an 
instant  that  his  horses  solve  for  them- 
selves, without  any  assistance,  without  any 
outside  influence,  simply  by  their  own  men- 
tal powers,  the  most  arduous  problems  set 
them.  He  is  persuaded  that  they  under- 
stand what  is  said  to  them  and  what  they 
say,  in  short,  that  their  brain  and  their 
will  perform  exactly  the  same  functions  as 
a  human  brain  and  will.  It  is  certain  that 
the  facts  seem  to  prove  him  right  and  that 
his  opinion  carries  very  great  weight,  for, 
after  all,  he  knows  his  horses  better  than 
any  one  does;  he  has  beheld  the  birth  or 
rather  the  awakening  of  that  dormant  in- 
telligence, even  as  a  mother  beholds  the 
birth  or  the  awakening  of  intelligence  in 
her  child;  he  has  perceived  its  first  grop- 
ings,  known  its  first  resistance  and  its  first 
triumphs;  he  has  watched  it  taking  shape, 

285 


The  Unknown  Guest 

breaking  away  and  gradually  rising  to  the 
point  at  which  it  stands  to-day;  in  a  word, 
he  is  the  father  and  the  principal  and  sole 
perpetual  witness  of  the  miracle. 

Yes,  but  the  miracle  comes  as  such  a  sur- 
prise that,  the  moment  we  set  foot  in  it,  a 
sort  of  instinctive  aberration  seizes  us,  re- 
fusing to  accept  the  evidence  and  com- 
pelling us  to  search  in  every  direction  to 
see  if  there  is  not  another  outlet.  Even  in 
the  presence  of  those  astounding  horses  and 
while  they  are  working  before  our  eyes, 
we  do  not  yet  sincerely  believe  that  which 
fills  and  subdues  our  gaze.  We  accept  the 
facts,  because  there  is  no  means  of  escap- 
ing them;  but  we  accept  them  only  provi- 
sionally and  with  all  reserve,  putting  off 
till  later  the  comfortable  explanation  which 
will  give  us  back  our  familiar,  shallow  cer- 
tainties.     But    the    explanation    does    not 

286 


The  Unknown  Guest 

come;  there  is  none  in  the  homely  and  not 
very  lofty  regions  wherein  we  hoped  to  find 
one;  there  is  neither  fault  nor  flaw  in  the 
mighty  evidence;  and  nothing  delivers  us 
from  the  mystery. 

It  must  be  confessed  that  this  mystery, 
springing  from  a  point  where  we  least  ex- 
pected to  come  upon  the  unknown,  bears 
enough  within  itself  to  scatter  all  our  con- 
victions. Remember  that,  since  man  ap- 
peared upon  this  earth,  he  has  lived  among 
creatures  which,  from  Immemorial  experi- 
ence, he  thought  that  he  knew  as  perfectly 
as  he  knows  an  object  fashioned  by  his 
hands.  Out  of  these  creatures  he  chose  the 
most  docile  and,  as  he  called  them,  the  most 
intelligent,  attaching  in  this  case  to  the  word 
Intelligence  a  sense  so  narrow  as  to  be  al- 
most ridiculous.  He  observed  them,  scruti- 
nized them,  tried  them,  analyzed  them  and 
dissected  them  In  every  Imaginable  way; 
and  whole  lives  were  devoted  to  nothing 

287 


The  Unknown  Guest 

but  the  study  of  their  habits,  their  facul- 
ties, their  nervous  system,  their  pathology, 
their  psychology,  their  instincts.  All  this 
led  to  certainties  which,  among  those  sup- 
ported by  our  unexplained  little  existence 
on  an  inexplicable  planet,  would  seem  to  be 
the  least  doubtful,  the  least  subject  to  re- 
vision. There  is  no  disputing,  for  instance, 
that  the  horse  is  gifted  with  an  extraordi- 
nary memory,  that  he  possesses  the  sense 
of  direction,  that  he  understands  a  few 
signs  and  even  a  few  words  and  that  he 
obeys  them.  It  is  equally  undeniable  that 
the  anthropoid  apes  are  capable  of  imitat- 
ing a  great  number  of  our  actions  and  of 
our  attitudes;  but  it  is  also  manifest  that 
their  bewildered  and  feverish  imagination 
perceives  neither  their  object  nor  their 
scope.  As  for  the  dog,  the  one  of  all  these 
privileged  animals  who  lives  closest  to  us, 
who  for  thousands  and  thousands  of  years 
has  eaten  at  our  table  and  worked  with  us 

288 


The  Unknown  Guest 

and  been  our  friend,  it  is  manifest  that,  now 
and  then,  we  catch  a  rather  uncanny  gleam 
in  his  deep,  watchful  eyes.  It  is  certain 
that  he  sometimes  wanders  in  a  curious 
fashion  along  the  mysterious  border  that 
separates  our  own  intelligence  from  that 
which  we  grant  to  the  other  creatures  in- 
habiting this  earth  with  us.  But  it  is  no 
less  certain  that  he  has  never  definitely 
passed  it.  We  know  exactly  how  far  he  can 
go;  and  we  have  invariably  found  that  our 
efforts,  our  patience,  our  encouragement, 
our  passionate  appeals  have  hitherto  failed 
to  draw  him  out  of  the  somewhat  narrow, 
darkly  enchanted  circle  wherein  nature 
seems  to  have  imprisoned  him  once  and 
for  all. 

20 

There  remains,  it  is  true,  the  insect- 
world,  in  which  marvellous  things  happen. 
It  includes  architects,  geometricians,  mech- 
anicians,    engineers,     weavers,     physicists, 

289 


The  Unknown  Guest 

chemists  and  surgeons  who  have  forestalled 
most  of  our  human  inventions.     I  need  not 
here  remind  the  reader  of  the  wasps'  and 
bees'  genius  for  building,  the  social  and  eco- 
nomic organization   of  the   hive   and  the 
ant-hill,   the  spider's  snares,  the  eumenes' 
nest  and  hanging  egg,  the  odynerus'  cell 
with  its  neat  stacks  of  game,   the  sacred 
beetle's  filthy  but  ingenious  ball,  the  leaf- 
cutter's  faultless  disks,  the  brick-laying  of 
the    mason-bee,    the    three    dagger-thrusts 
which  the  sphex  administers  to  the  three 
nerve-centres  of  the  cricket,  the  lancet  of 
the    cerceris,    who    paralyses    her    victims 
without  killing  them  and  preserves  them  for 
an  indefinite  period  as  fresh  meat,  nor  a 
thousand  other  features  which  it  would  be 
Impossible  to  enumerate  without  recapitu- 
lating the  whole  of  Henri  Fabre's  work 
and  completely  altering  the  proportions  of 
the  present  essay.    But  here  such  silence  and 
such  darkness  reign  that  we  have  nothing 

290 


The  Unknown  Guest 

to  hope  for.  There  exists,  so  to  speak,  no 
bench-mark,  no  means  of  communication 
between  the  world  of  insects  and  our  own; 
and  we  are  perhaps  less  far  from  grasping 
and  fathoming  what  takes  place  on  Saturn 
or  Jupiter  than  what  is  enacted  in  the  ant- 
hill or  the  hive.  We  know  absolutely 
nothing  of  the  quality,  the  number,  the  ex- 
tent or  even  the  nature  of  their  senses. 
Many  of  the  great  laws  on  which  our  life 
is  based  do  not  exist  for  them:  those,  for 
instance,  which  govern  fluids  are  completely 
reversed.  They  seem  to  inhabit  our  planet, 
but  In  reality  move  in  an  entirely  different 
world.  Understanding  nothing  of  their  in- 
telligence pierced  with  disconcerting  gaps. 
In  which  the  blindest  stupidity  suddenly 
comes  and  destroys  the  ablest  and  most  in- 
spired schemes,  we  have  given  the  name  of 
Instinct  to  that  which  we  could  not  appre- 
hend, postponing  our  interpretation  of  a 

word  that  touches  upon  life's  most  Insoluble 

291 


The  Unknown  Guest 

riddles.  There  Is,  therefore,  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  intellectual  faculties, 
nothing  to  be  gathered  from  those  extra- 
ordinary creatures  who  are  not,  like  the 
other  aniiyials,  our  "lesser  brothers,"  but 
strangers,  aliens  from  we  know  not  where, 
survivors  or  precursors  of  another  world. 

21 

We  were  at  this  stage,  slumbering  peace- 
fully in  our  long-established  convictions, 
when  a  man  entered  upon  the  scene  and 
suddenly  showed  us  that  we  were  wrong 
and  that,  for  long  centuries,  we  had  over- 
looked a  truth  which  was  scarcely  even 
covered  with  a  very  thin  veil.  And  the 
strangest  thing  is  that  this  astonishing  dis- 
covery is  In  no  wise  the  natural  consequence 
of  a  new  Invention,  of  processes  or  methods 
hitherto  unknown.  It  owes  nothing  to  the 
latest  acquirements  of  our  knowledge.     It 

springs  from  the  humblest  idea  which  the 

292 


The  Unknown  Guest 

most  primitive  man  might  have  conceived  in 
the  first  days  of  the  earth's  existence.  It  is 
simply  a  matter  of  having  a  little  more 
patience,  confidence  and  respect  for  all  that 
which  shares  our  lot  in  a  world  whereof  we 
know  none  of  the  purposes.  It  is  simply 
a  matter  of  having  a  little  less  pride  and 
of  looking  a  little  more  fraternally  upon 
existences  that  are  much  more  fraternal 
than  we  believed.  There  is  no  secret  about 
the  almost  puerile  ingenuousness  of  Von 
Osten's  methods  and  Krall's.  They  start 
with  the  principle  that  the  horse  is  an  ig- 
norant but  intelligent  child;  and  they  treat 
him  as  such.  They  speak,  explain,  demon- 
strate, argue  and  mete  out  rewards  or  pun- 
ishments like  a  schoolmaster  addressing 
little  boys  of  five  or  six.  They  begin  by 
placing  a  few  skittle-pins  in  front  of  their 
strange  pupil.  They  count  them  and  make 
him  count  them  by  alternately  lifting  and 
lowering  the  horse's  hoof.     He  thus  ob- 

293 


The  Unknown  Guest 

tains  his  first  notion  of  numbers.  They  next 
add  one  or  two  more  skittles  and  say,  for 
Instance: 

'Three  skittles  and  two  skittles  are  five 
skittles." 

In  this  way,  they  explain  and  teach  addi- 
tion; next,  by  the  reverse  process,  subtrac- 
tion, which  is  followed  by  multiplication, 
division  and  all  the  rest. 

At  the  beginning,  the  lessons  are  ex- 
tremely laborious  and  demand  an  untiring 
and  loving  patience,  which  is  the  whole  se- 
cret of  the  miracle.  But,  as  soon  as  the 
first  barrier  of  darkness  is  passed,  the 
progress  becomes  bewilderingly  rapid. 

All  this  is  incontestable;  and  the  facts 

are  there,  before  which  we  must  needs  bow. 

But  what  upsets  all  our  convictions  or,  more 

correctly,  all  the  prejudices  which  thousands 

of  years  have  made  as  Invincible  as  axioms, 

what  we  do  not  succeed  in  understanding  is 

that  the  horse  at  once  understands  what  we 

294 


The  Unknown  Guest 

want  of  him;  It  is  that  first  step,  the  first 
tremor  of  an  unexpected  intelligence,  which 
suddenly  reveals  itself  as  human.  At  what 
precise  second  did  the  light  appear  and  was 
the  veil  rent  asunder?  It  is  impossible  to 
say;  but  it  is  certain  that,  at  a  given  mo- 
ment, without  any  visible  sign  to  reveal  the 
prodigious  inner  transformation,  the  horse 
acts  and  replies  as  though  he  suddenly  un- 
derstood the  speech  of  man.  What  is  it 
that  sets  the  miracle  working?  We  know 
that,  after  a  time,  the  horse  associates  cer- 
tain words  with  certain  objects  that  interest 
him  or  with  three  or  four  events  whose  in- 
finite repetition  forms  the  humble  tissue  of 
his  daily  life.  This  is  only  a  sort  of  me- 
chanical memory  which  has  nothing  in  com- 
mon with  the  most  elementary  intelligence. 
But  behold,  one  fine  day,  without  any  per- 
ceptible transition,  he  seems  to  know  the 
meaning  of  a  host  of  words  which  possess 
.no  interest  for  him;  which  represent  to  him 

295 


The  Unknown  Guest 

no  picture,  no  memory;  which  he  has  never 
had  occasion  to  connect  with  any  sensation, 
agreeable  or  disagreeable.  He  handles  fig- 
ures which  even  to  man  are  nothing  but 
obscure  and  abstract  ideas.  He  solves 
problems  that  cannot  possibly  be  made  ob- 
jective or  concrete.  He  reproduces  letters 
which,  from  his  point  of  view,  correspond 
with  nothing  actual.  He  fixes  his  attention 
and  makes  observations  on  things  or  circum- 
stances which  in  no  way  affect  him,  which 
remain  and  always  will  remain  alien  and  in- 
different to  him.  In  a  word,  he  steps  out  of 
the  narrow  ring  in  which  he  was  made  to 
turn  by  hunger  and  fear — which  have  been 
described  as  the  two  great  moving  powers 
of  all  that  is  not  human — to  enter  the  im- 
mense circle  in  which  sensations  go  on  be- 
ing shed  till  ideas  come  into  view. 

22 

Is  it  possible  to  believe  that  the  horses 

2p6 


The  Unknown  Guest 

really  do  what  they  appear  to  do?  Is  there 
no  precedent  for  the  marvel?  Is  there  no 
transition  between  the  Elberfeld  stallions 
and  the  horses  which  we  have  known  until 
this  day?  It  is  not  easy  to  answer  these 
questions,  for  it  is  only  since  yesterday  that 
the  intellectual  powers  of  our  defenceless 
brothers  have  been  subjected  to  strictly 
scientific  experiments.  We  have,  it  is  true, 
more  than  one  collection  of  anecdotes  in 
which  the  intelligence  of  animals,  is  lauded 
to  the  skies;  but  we  cannot  rely  upon  these 
ill-authenticated  stories.  To  find  genuine 
and  incontestable  instances  we  must  have 
recourse  to  the  works,  rare  as  yet,  of  scien- 
tific men  who  have  made  a  special  study  of 
the  subject.  M.  Hachet-Souplet,  for  ex- 
ample, the  director  of  the  Tnstitut  de  Psy- 
chologic Zoologique,  mentions  the  case  of 
a  dog  who  learnt  to  acquire  an  abstract 
Idea  of  weight.  You  put  In  front  of  him 
eight  rounded  and  polished  stones,   all  of 

297 


The  Unknown  Guest 

exactly  the  same  size  and  shape,  but  of  dif- 
ferent weights.  You  tell  him  to  fetch  the 
heaviest  or  the  lightest;  he  judges  their 
weight  by  lifting  them  and,  without  mis- 
take, picks  out  the  one  required. 

The  same  writer  also  tells  the  story  of  a 
parrot  to  whom  he  had  taught  the  word 
"cupboard"  by  showing  him  a  little  box 
that  could  be  hung  up  on  the  wall  at  dif- 
ferent heights  and  in  which  his  daily  al- 
lowance of  food  was  always  ostentatiously 
put  away: 

"I  next  taught  him  the  names  of  a  num- 
ber of  objects,"  says  M.  Hachet-Souplet, 
"by  holding  them  out  to  him.  Among 
them  was  a  ladder;  and  I  prevailed  upon 
the  bird  to  say,  'Climb,'  each  time  that  he 
saw  me  mount  the  steps.  One  morning, 
when  the  parrot's  cage  was  brought  into 
the  laboratory,  the  cupboard  was  hanging 
near  the  ceiling,  while  the  little  ladder  was 

298 


The  Unknown  Guest 

stowed  away  in  a  corner  among  other  ob- 
jects familiar  to  the  bird.  Now  the  parrot, 
every  day,  when  I  opened  the  cupboard, 
used  to  scream,  'Cupboard!  Cupboard! 
Cupboard!'  with  all  his  might.  My  prob- 
lem was,  therefore,  this:  seeing  that  the 
cupboard  was  out  of  my  reach  and  that, 
therefore,  I  could  not  take  his  food  out 
of  it;  knowing,  on  the  other  hand,  that  I 
was  able  to  raise  myself  above  the  level 
of  the  floor  by  climbing  the  ladder;  and 
having  the  words  'climb'  and  'ladder'  at 
his  disposal:  would  he  employ  them  to  sug- 
gest to  me  the  idea  of  using  them  in  order 
to  reach  the  cupboard?  Greatly  excited, 
the  parrot  flapped  his  wings,  bit  the  bars 
of  his  cage,  and  screamed: 

"'Cupboard!  Cupboard!  Cupboard!* 

"And  I  got  no  more  out  of  him  that  day. 

The  next   day,   the  bird,   having  received 

nothing  but  millet,   for  which  he  did  not 

much  care,  instead  of  the  hemp-seed  con- 

299 


The  Unknown  Guest 

talned  In  the  cupboard,  was  In  paroxysms 
of  anger;  and,  after  he  had  made  number- 
less attempts  to  force  open  his  bars,  his 
attention  was  at  last  caught  by  the  ladder 
and  he  said: 

"  'Ladder,  climb,  cupboard !' 


V  '» 


We  have  here,  as  the  author  remarks,  a 
marvellous  intellectual  effort.  There  is  an 
evident  association  of  ideas;  cause  Is  linked 
with  effect;  and  examples  such  as  this  les- 
sen appreciably  the  distance  separating  our 
learned  horses  from  their  less  celebrated 
brethren.  We  must  admit,  however,  that 
this  intellectual  effort,  if  we  observe  animals 
a  little  carefully,  is  much  less  uncommon 
than  we  think.  It  surprises  us  In  this  case 
because  a  special  and,  when  all  Is  said, 
purely  mechanical  arrangement  of  the  par- 
rot's organ  gives  him  a  human  voice.  At 
every  moment,  I  find  in  my  own  dog  asso- 
ciations of  Ideas  no  less  evident  and  often 

300 


The  Unknown  Guest 

more  complex.  For  instance,  if  he  is 
thirsty,  he  seeks  my  eyes  and  next  looks  at 
the  tap  in  the  dressing-room,  thus  showing 
that  he  very  plainly  connects  the  notions  of 
thirst,  running  water  and  human  interven- 
tion. When  I  dress  to  go  out,  he  evidently 
watches  all  my  movements.  While  I  am 
lacing  my  boots,  he  conscientiously  licks  my 
hands,  in  order  that  my  divinity  may  be 
good  to  him  and  especially  to  congratulate 
m.e  on  my  capital  idea  of  going  out  for  a 
constitutional.  It  is  a  sort  of  general  and 
as  yet  vague  approval.  Boots  promise  an 
excursion  out  of  doors,  that  is  to  say,  space, 
fragrant  roads,  long  grass  full  of  surprises, 
corners  scented  with  oft'al,  friendly  or  tragic 
encounters  and  the  pursuit  of  wholly  il- 
lusory game.  But  the  fair  vision  Is  still  in 
anxious  suspense.  He  does  not  yet  know 
if  he  is  going  with  me.  His  fate  is  now 
being  decided;  and  his  eyes,  melting  with 
anguish,  devour  my  mind.     If  I  buckle  on 

301 


The  Unknown  Guest 

my  leather  gaiters,  It  means  the  sudden  and 
utter  extinction  of  all  that  constitutes  the 
joy  of  life.  They  leave  not  a  ray  of  hope. 
They  herald  the  hateful,  lonely  motor- 
cycle, which  he  cannot  keep  up  with;  and 
he  stretches  himself  sadly  in  a  dark  corner, 
where  he  goes  back  to  the  gloomy  dreams 
of  an  unoccupied,  forsaken  dog.  But,  when 
I  slip  my  arms  into  the  sleeves  of  my  heavy 
great-coat,  one  would  think  that  they  were 
opening  the  gates  of  the  most  dazzling 
paradise.  For  this  implies  the  car,  the  ob- 
vious, indubitable  motor-car,  in  other 
words,  the  radiant  summit  of  the  most 
superlative  delight.  And  delirious  barks, 
inordinate  bounds,  riotous,  embarrassing 
demonstrations  of  affection  greet  a  happi- 
ness which,  for  all  that,  is  but  an  immate- 
rial idea,  built  up  of  artless  memories  and 
ingenuous  hopes. 

23 
I  mention  these  matters  only  because  they 

302 


The  Unknown  Guest 

are  quite  ordinary  and  because  there  is  no- 
body who  has  not  made  a  thousand  similar 
observations.  As  a  rule,  we  do  not  notice 
that  these  humble  manifestations  represent 
sentiments,  associations  of  Ideas,  inferences, 
deductions,  an  absolute  and  altogether  hu- 
man mental  effort.  They  lack  only  speech; 
but  speech  is  merely  a  mechanical  accident 
which  reveals  the  operations  of  thought 
more  clearly  to  us.  We  are  amazed  that 
Muhamed  or  Zarif  should  recognize  the 
picture  of  a  horse,  a  donkey,  a  hat,  or  a 
man  on  horseback,  or  that  they  should  spon- 
taneously report  to  their  master  the  little 
events  that  happen  in  the  stable;  but  it  is 
certain  that  our  own  dog  is  incessantly  per- 
forming a  similar  work  and  that  his  eyes, 
if  we  could  read  them,  would  tell  us  a  great 
deal  more.  The  primary  miracle  of  Elber- 
feld  Is  that  the  stallions  should  have  been 
given  the  means  of  expressing  what  they 
think  and  feel.    It  is  momentous ;  but,  when 

303 


The  Unknown  Guest 

closely  looked  into,  it  is  not  incomprehensi- 
ble. Between  the  talking  horses  and  my 
silent  dog  there  is  an  enormous  distance,  but 
not  an  abyss.  I  am  saying  this  not  to  de- 
tract from  the  nature  or  extent  of  the 
prodigy,  but  to  call  attention  to  the  fact 
that  the  theory  of  animal  intelligence  is 
more  justifiable  and  less  fanciful  than  one 
is  at  first  inclined  to  think. 

24 

But  the  second  and  greater  miracle  is  that 
man  should  have  been  able  to  rouse  the 
horse  from  his  immemorial  sleep,  to  fix  and 
direct  his  attention  and  to  interest  him  in 
matters  that  are  more  foreign  and  indiffer- 
ent to  him  than  the  variations  of  tempera- 
ture in  Sirius  or  Aldebaran  are  to  us.  It 
really  seems,  when  we  consider  our  precon- 
ceived ideas,  that  there  is  not  in  the  animal 
an  organic  and  insurmountable  inability  to 
do  what  man's  brain  does,  a  total  and  Irre- 

304 


The  Unknown  Guest 

mediable  absence  of  intellectual  faculties, 
but  rather  a  profound  lethargy  and  torpor 
of  those  faculties.  It  lives  in  a  sort  of  un- 
disturbed  stolidity,  of  nebulous  slumber. 
As  Dr.  Ochorowicz  very  justly  remarks, 
"its  waking  state  is  very  near  akin  to  the 
state  of  a  man  walking  in  his  sleep." 
Having  no  notion  of  space  or  time,  it 
spends  its  life,  one  may  say,  in  a  perpetual 
dream.  It  does  what  is  strictly  necessary 
to  keep  itself  alive;  and  all  the  rest  passes 
over  it  and  does  not  penetrate  at  all  into 
its  hermetically  closed  imaginings.  Excep- 
tional circumstances — some  extraordinary 
need,  wish,  passion  or  shock — are  required 
to  produce  what  M.  Hachet-Souplet  calls 
"the  psychic  flash"  which  suddenly  thaws 
and  galvanizes  Its  brain,  placing  it  for  a 
minute  in  the  waking  state  In  which  the 
human  brain  works  normally.  Nor  Is  this 
surprising.  It  does  not  need  that  awaken- 
ing in  order  to  exist;  and  we  know  that  na- 

305 


\ 


The  Unknown  Guest 

ture  never  makes  great  superfluous  efforts. 

"The  intellect,"  as  Professor  Clarapede 
well  says,  "appears  only  as  a  makeshift,  an 
instrument  which  betrays  that  the  organism 
Is  not  adapted  to  its  environment,  a  mode 
of  expression  which  reveals  a  state  of  im- 
potence." 

It  Is  probable  that  our  brain  at  first  suf- 
fered from  the  same  lethargy,  a  condition, 
for  that  matter,  from  which  many  men 
have  not  yet  emerged;  and  it  Is  even  more 
probable  that,  compared  with  other  modes 
of  existence,  with  other  psychic  phenomena, 
on  another  plane  and  in  another  sphere, 
the  dense  sleep  In  which  we  move  Is  similar 
to  that  In  which  the  lower  animals  have 
their  being.  It  also  is  traversed,  with  In- 
creasing frequency,  by  psychic  flashes  of  a 
different  order  and  a  different  scope.  See- 
ing, on  the  one  side,  the  intellectual  move- 
ment that  seems  to  be  spreading  among  our 

lesser  brothers  and,  on  the  other,  the  ever 

306 


The  Unknown  Guest 

more  constantly  repeated  manifestations  of 
our  subconsciousness,  we  might  even  ask 
ourselves  if  we  have  not  here,  on  two  dif- 
ferent planes,  a  tension,  a  parallel  pressure, 
a  new  desire,  a  new  attempt  of  the  myste- 
rious spiritual  force  which  animates  the  uni- 
verse and  which  seems  to  be  incessantly 
seeking  fresh  outlets  and  fresh  conducting- 
rods.  Be  this  as  it  may,  when  the  flash  has 
passed,  we  behave  very  much  as  the  animals 
do:  we  promptly  lapse  into  the  indifferent 
sleep  which  suffices  also  for  our  miserable 
ways.  We  ask  no  more  of  it,  we  do  not 
follow  the  luminous  trail  that  summons  us 
to  an  unknown  world,  we  go  on  turning  in 
our  dismal  circle,  like  contented  sleep- 
walkers, while  Isis'  sistrum  rattles  without 
respite  to  rouse  the  faithful. 

25 

I  repeat,  the  great  miracle  of  Elberfeld 
is  that  of  having  been  able  to  prolong  and 

307 


The  Unknown  Guest 

reproduce  at  will  those  isolated  "psychic 
flashes."  The  horses,  in  comparison  with 
the  other  animals,  are  here  in  the  state  of 
a  man  whose  subliminal  consciousness  had 
gained  the  upper  hand.  That  man  would 
lead  a  higher  existence,  in  an  almost  imma- 
terial atmosphere,  of  which  the  phenomena 
of  metaphysics,  sparks  falling  from  a  re- 
gion which  we  shall  perhaps  one  day  reach, 
sometimes  give  us  an  uncertain  and  fleet- 
ing glimpse.  Our  intelligence,  which  is 
really  lethargy  and  which  keeps  us  impris- 
oned in  a  little  hollow  of  space  and  time, 
would  there  be  replaced  by  intuition,  or 
rather  by  a  sort  of  immanent  knowledge 
which  would  forthwith  make  us  sharers  in 
all  that  is  known  to  a  universe  which  per- 
haps knows  all  things.  Unfortunately,  we 
have  not,  or  at  least,  unlike  the  horses,  we 
are  not  acquainted  with  a  superior  being 
who  interests  himself  in  us  and  helps  us  to 
thxow  off  our  torpor.    We  have  to  become 

308 


The  Unknown  Guest 

our  own  god,  to  rise  above  ourselves  and 
to  keep  ourselves  raised  by  our  unaided 
strength.  It  is  almost  certain  that  the  horse 
would  never  have  come  out  of  his  nebulous 
sphere  without  man's  assistance;  but  it  is 
not  forbidden  to  hope  that  man,  with  no 
other  help  than  his  own  courage  and  high 
purpose,  may  yet  succeed  in  breaking 
through  the  sleep  that  cramps  him  and 
blinds  him. 

26 
To  come  back  then  to  our  horses  and 
to  the  main  point,  which  is  the  isolated 
"psychic  flash,"  it  is  admitted  that  they 
know  the  values  of  figures,  that  they  can 
distinguish  and  identify  smells,  colours, 
forms,  objects  and  even  graphic  reproduc- 
tions of  those  objects.  They  also  under- 
stand a  large  number  of  words,  including 
some  of  which  they  were  never  taught  the 
meaning,  but  which  they  picked  up  as  they 
went  along  by  hearing  them  spoken  around 

309 


The  Unknown  Guest 

them.  They  have  learnt,  with  the  as- 
sistance of  an  exceedingly  complicated  al- 
phabet, to  reproduce  the  words,  thanks  to 
which  they  manage  to  convey  impressions, 
sensations,  wishes,  associations  of  ideas,  ob- 
servations and  even  spontaneous  reflections. 
It  has  been  held  that  all  this  implies  real 
acts  of  intelligence.  It  is,  in  fact,  often 
very  difficult  to  decide  exactly  how  far  it 
is  intelligence  and  how  far  memory,  in- 
stinct, imitative  genius,  obedience  or  me- 
chanical impulse,  the  effects  of  training,  or 
happy  coincidences. 

There  are  cases,  however,  which  admit 
of  little  or  no  hesitation.     I  give  a  few. 

One  day  Krall  and  his  collaborator,  Dr. 

Scholler,  thought  that  they  would  try  and 

teach    Muhamed    to    express    himself    in 

speech.      The    horse,   a    docile   and   eager 

pupil,  made  touching  and  fruitless  efforts 

to    reproduce    human    sounds.      Suddenly, 

he  stopped   and,   in   his   strange   phonetic 

310 


The  Unknown  Guest 

spelling,  declared,  by  striking  his  foot  on 
the  spring-board: 

*'Ig  lib  kein  gud  Sdim :  I  have  not  a  good 
voice." 

Observing  that  he  did  not  open  his 
mouth,  they  strove  to  make  him  understand, 
by  the  example  of  a  dog,  with  pictures,  and 
so  on,  that,  in  order  to  speak,  it  is  necessary 
to  separate  the  jaws.  They  next  asked 
him : 

"What  must  you  do  to  speak?" 

He  replied,  by  striking  with  his  foot : 

"Open  mouth." 

"Why  don't  you  open  yours?" 

"Weil  kan  nigd:  because  I  can't." 

A  few  days  after,  Zarif  was  asked  how 
he  talks  to  Muhamed. 

"Mit  Munt:  with  mouth." 

"Why  don't  you  tell  me  that  with  your 
mouth?" 

"Weil  ig  kein  Stint  hbe:  because  I  have 
no  voice." 

3" 


The  Unknown  Guest 

Does  not  this  answer,  as  Krall  remarks, 
allow  us  to  suppose  that  he  has  other  means 
than  speech  of  conversing  with  his  stable- 
companion  ? 

In  the  course  of  another  lesson,  Mu- 
hamed  was  shown  the  portrait  of  a  young 
girl  whom  he  did  not  know. 

"What's  that?"  asked  his  master. 

"Metgen:   a  girl." 

On  the  black-board: 

"Why  is  it  a  girl?" 

"JFeil  lang  Hr  hd:  because  she  has  long 
hair." 

"And  what  has  she  not?" 

"Moustache." 

They  next  produced  the  likeness  of  a 
man  with  no  moustache. 

"What's  this?" 

"Man." 

"Why  is  it  a  man?" 

"Weil  kurz  Hr  had:  because  he  has 
short  hair." 

312 


The  Unknown  Guest 

I  could  multiply  these  examples  indefi- 
nitely by  drawing  on  the  voluminous  Elber- 
feld  minutes,  which,  I  may  say  in  passing, 
have  the  convincing  force  of  photographic 
records.  All  this,  it  must  be  agreed,  is  un- 
expected and  disconcerting,  had  never  been 
foreseen  or  suspected  and  may  be  regarded 
as  one  of  the  strangest  prodigies,  one  of 
the  most  stupefying  revelations  that  have 
taken  place  since  man  has  dwelt  in  this 
world  of  riddles.  Nevertheless,  by  reflect- 
ing, by  comparing,  by  investigating,  by  re- 
garding certain  forgotten  or  neglected  land- 
marks and  starting-points,  by  taking  into 
consideration  the  thousand  imperceptible 
gradations  between  the  greatest  and  the 
least,  the  highest  and  the  lowest,  it  is  still 
possible  to  explain,  admit  and  understand. 
We  can,  if  it  comes  to  that,  imagine  that, 
in  his  secret  self,  in  his  tragic  silence,  our 
dog  also  makes  similar  remarks  and  reflec- 
tions.    Once  again,  the  miraculous  bridge 

313 


The  Unknown  Guest 

which,  in  this  instance,  spans  the  gulf  be- 
tween the  animal  and  man  is  much  more 
the  expression  of  thought  than  thought  it- 
self. We  may  go  further  and  grant  that 
certain  elementary  calculations,  such  as 
little  additions,  little  subtractions  of  one  or 
two  figures,  are,  after  all,  conceivable;  and 
T,  for  my  part,  am  inclined  to  believe  that 
the  horse  really  executes  them.  But  where 
we  get  out  of  our  depth,  where  we  enter 
into  the  realm  of  pure  enchantment  is  when 
it  becomes  a  matter  of  mathematical  opera- 
tions on  a  large  scale,  notably  of  the  finding 
of  roots.  We  know,  for  instance,  that  the 
extraction  of  the  fourth  root  of  a  number 
of  six  figures  calls  for  eighteen  multiplica- 
tions, ten  subtractions  and  three  divisions 
and  that  the  horse  does  thirty-one  sums  in 
five  or  six  seconds,  that  is  to  say, 
during  the  brief,  careless  glance  which 
he  gives  at  the  black-board  on  which 
the   problem   is   inscribed,    as   though   the 

314 


The  Unknown  Guest 

answer    came    to   him    Intuitively    and    in- 
stantaneously. 

Still,  if  we  admit  the  theory  of  intelli- 
gence, we  must  also  admit  that  the  horse 
knows  what  he  is  doing,  since  it  is  not  until 
after  learning  what  a  squared  number  or  a 
square  root  means  that  he  appears  to  un- 
derstand or  that,  at  any  rate,  he  gradually 
works  out  correctly  the  ever  more  compli- 
cated calculations  required  of  him.  It  is 
not  possible  to  give  here  the  details  of  this 
instruction,  which  was  astonishingly  rapid. 
The  reader  will  find  them  on  pages  117 
et  seq.  of  Krall's  book,  Denkende  Tiere. 
Krall  begins  by  explaining  to  Muhamed 
that  2-  is  equal  to  2X2  =  4;  that  2'  is 
equal  to  2X2X2  =  8;  that  2  Is  the 
square  root  of  4;  and  so  on.  In  short,  the 
explanations  and  demonstrations  are  abso- 
lutely similar  to  those  which  one  would 
give  to  an  extremely  intelligent  child,  with 
this  difference,  that  the  horse  Is  much  more 

315 


The  Unknown  Guest 

attentive  than  the  child  and  that,  thanks 
to  his  extraordinary  memory,  he  never  for- 
gets what  he  appears  to  have  understood. 
Let  u€  add,  to  complete  the  magical  and 
incredible  character  of  the  phenomenon 
that,  according  to  Krall's  own  statement, 
the  horse  was  not  taught  beyond  the  point 
of  extracting  the  square  root  of  the  num- 
ber 144  and  that  he  spontaneously  Invented 
the  manner  of  extracting  all  the  others. 

27 

Must  we  once  more  repeat,  in  connection 
with  these  startling  performances,  that 
those  who  speak  of  audible  or  visible  sig- 
nals, of  telegraphy  and  wireless  telegraphy, 
of  expedients,  trickery  or  deceit,  are  speak- 
ing of  what  they  do  not  know  and  of  what 
they  have  not  seen?  There  is  but  one  re- 
ply to  be  made  to  any  one  who  honestly 
refuses  to  believe : 

"Go  to  Elberfeld — the  problem  Is  suffi- 

316 


The  Unknown  Guest 

ciently  important,  sufficiently  big  with  con- 
sequences to  make  the  journey  worth  while 
— and,  behind  closed  doors,  alone  w^ith  the 
horse,  in  the  absolute  solitude  and  silence  of 
the  stable,  set  Muhamed  to  extract  half-a- 
dozen  roots  which,  like  that  which  I  have 
mentioned,  require  thirty-one  operations. 
You  must  yourself  be  ignorant  of  the  solu- 
tions, so  as  to  do  away  with  any  transmis- 
sion of  unconscious  thought.  If  he  then 
gives  you,  one  after  the  other,  five  or  six 
correct  solutions,  as  he  did  to  me  and  many 
others,  you  will  not  go  away  with  the  con- 
viction that  the  animal  Is  able  by  Its  In- 
telligence to  extract  those  roots,  because 
that  conviction  would  upset  too  thoroughly 
the  greater  part  of  the  certainties  on  which 
your  life  Is  based;  but  you  will,  at  any  rate, 
be  persuaded  that  you  have  been  for  a  few 
minutes  In  the  presence  of  one  of  the  great- 
est and  strangest  riddles  that  can  disturb 
the  mind  of  man;  and  It  Is  always  a  good 

317 


The  Unknown  Guest 

and  salutary  thing  to  come  Into  contact  with 
emotions  of  this  order." 

28 

Truth  to  say,  the  theory  of  intelligence 
in  the  animal  would  be  so  extraordinary  as 
to  be  almost  untenable.  If  we  are  deter- 
mined, at  whatever  cost,  to  pin  our  faith  to 
it,  we  are  bound  to  call  in  the  aid  of  other 
ideas,  to  appeal,  for  Instance,  to  the  ex- 
tremely mysterious  and  essentially  uncom- 
prehended  and  incomprehensible  nature  of 
numbers.  It  is  almost  certain  that  the 
science  of  mathematics  lies  outside  the  in- 
telligence. It  forms  a  mechanical  and  ab- 
stract whole,  more  spiritual  than  material 
and  more  material  than  spiritual,  visible 
only  through  Its  shadow  and  yet  constitut- 
ing the  most  Immovable  of  the  realities  that 
govern  the  universe.  From  first  to  last  it 
declares  itself  a  very  strange  force  and,  as 
it  were,  the  sovereign  of  another  element 

318 


The  Unknown  Guest 

than  that  which  nourishes  our  brain.  Secret, 
indifferent,  imperious  and  imphicable,  it 
subjugates  and  oppresses  us  from  a  great 
height  or  a  great  depth,  in  any  case,  from 
very  far,  without  telling  us  why.  One 
might  say  that  figures  place  those  who 
handle  them  in  a  special  condition.  They 
draw  the  cabalistic  circle  around  their  vic- 
tim. Henceforth,  he  is  no  longer  his  own 
master,  he  renounces  his  liberty,  he  is  lit- 
erally "possessed"  by  the  powers  which  he 
invokes.  He  is  dragged  he  knows  not 
whither,  into  a  formless,  boundless  immens- 
ity, subject  to  laws  that  have  nothing  hu- 
man about  them,  in  which  each  of  those 
lively  and  tyrannical  little  signs  which  move 
and  dance  in  their  thousands  under  the  pen 
represents  nameless,  but  eternal,  invincible 
and  Inevitable  verities.  We  think  that  we 
are  directing  them  and  they  enslave  us.  We 
become  weary  and  breathless  following 
them     Into     their     uninhabitable     spaces. 

319 


The  Unknown  Guest 

When  we  touch  them,  we  let  loose  a  force 
which  we  are  no  longer  able  to  control. 
They  do  with  us  what  they  will  and  always 
end  by  hurling  us,  blinded  and  benumbed, 
Into  blank  Infinity  or  upon  a  wall  of  ice 
against  which  every  effort  of  our  mind  and 
win  Is  shattered. 

It  is  possible,  therefore,  in  the  last  resort, 
to  explain  the  Elberfeld  mystery  by  the  no 
less  obscure  mystery  that  surrounds  num- 
bers. This  really  only  means  moving  to 
another  spot  in  the  gloom;  but  It  Is  often 
just  by  that  moving  to  another  spot  that 
we  end  by  discovering  the  little  gleam  of 
light  which  shows  us  a  thoroughfare.  In 
any  case,  and  to  return  to  more  precise 
Ideas,  more  than  one  instance  has  been 
cited  to  prove  that  the  gift  of  handling 
great  groups  of  figures  is  almost  Indepen- 
dent of  the  Intelligence  proper.  One  of  the 
most  curious  Is  that  of  an  Italian  shepherd- 
boy,  Vito  Manglamele,  who  was  brought 

320 


The  Unknown  Guest 

before  the  Paris  Academy  of  Science  in 
1837  and  who,  at  the  age  of  ten,  though  de- 
void of  the  most  rudimentary  education, 
was  able  in  half  a  minute  to  extract  the 
cubic  root  of  a  number  of  seven  figures. 
Another,  more  striking  still,  also  mentioned 
by  Dr.  Clarapede  in  his  paper  on  the 
learned  horses,  is  that  of  a  man  blind  from 
birth,  an  inmate  of  the  lunatic-asylum  at 
Armentieres.  This  blind  man,  whose  name 
is  Fleury,  a  degenerate  and  nearly  an  idiot, 
can  calculate  in  one  minute  and  fifteen  sec- 
onds the  number  of  seconds  in  thirty-nine 
years,  three  months  and  twelve  days,  not 
forgetting  the  leap-years.  They  explain  to 
him  what  a  square  root  is,  without  telling 
him  the  conventional  method  of  finding  it; 
and  soon  he  extracts  almost  as  rapidly  as 
Inaudi  himself,  without  a  blunder,  the 
square  roots  of  numbers  of  four  figures, 
giving  the  remainder.     On  the  other  hand, 

we  know  that  a  mathematical  genius  like 

321 


The  Unknown  Guest 

Henri  Poincare  confessed  himself  incapable 
of  adding  up  a  column  of  figures  without 
a  mistake. 

29 
From  the  maybe  enchanted  atmosphere 
that  surrounds  numbers  we  shall  pass  more 
easily  to  the  even  more  magic  mists  of  the 
final  theory,  the  only  one  remaining  to  us 
for  the  moment:  the  mediumistic  or  sub- 
liminal theory.  This,  we  must  remember, 
is  not  the  telepathic  theory  proper  which 
decisive  experiments  have  made  us  reject. 
Let  us  have  the  courage  to  venture  upon 
it.  When  one  can  no  longer  interpret  a 
phenomenon  by  the  known,  we  must  needs 
try  to  do  so  by  the  unknown.  We,  there- 
fore, now  enter  a  new  province  of  a  great 
unexplored  kingdom,  in  which  we  shall  find 
ourselves  without  a  guide. 

Mediumistic  phenomena,  manifestations 
of  the  secondary  or  the  subliminal  con- 
sciousness, between  man  and  man,  are,  as 

322 


The  Unknown  Guest 

we  have  more  than  once  had  occasion  to 
assure  ourselves,  capricious,  undisciplined, 
evasive  and  uncertain,  but  more  frequent 
than  one  thought  and,  to  one  who  examines 
them  seriously  and  honestly,  often  unde- 
niable. Have  similar  manifestations  been 
discovered  between  man  and  the  animals? 
The  study  of  these  manifestations,  which  is 
very  difficult  even  in  the  case  of  man,  be- 
comes still  more  so  when  we  question  wit- 
nesses doomed  to  silence.  There  are,  how- 
ever, some  animals  which  are  looked  upon 
as  "psychic,"  which.  In  other  words,  seem 
indisputably  to  be  sensitive  to  certain  sub- 
liminal influences.  One  usually  classes  the 
cat,  the  dog  and  the  horse  in  this  somewhat 
ill-defined  category.  To  these  superstitious 
animals  one  might  perhaps  add  certain 
birds,  more  or  less  birds  of  omen,  and  even 
a  few  insects,  notably  the  bees.  Other 
animals,  such  as,  for  instance,  the  elephant 
and  the  monkey,  appear  to  be  proof  against 

323 


The  Unknown  Guest 

mystery.  Be  this  as  it  may,  M.  Ernest 
Bozzano,  in  an  excellent  article  on  Les  Per- 
ceptions psychiqiies  des  animaux,^  collected 
in  1905  sixty-nine  cases  of  telepathy,  pre- 
sentiments and  hallucinations  of  sight  or 
hearing  in  which  the  principal  actors  are 
cats,  dogs  and  horses.  There  are,  even 
among  them,  ghosts  or  phantoms  of  dogs 
which,  after  their  death,  return  to  haunt 
the  homes  in  which  they  were  happy.  Most 
of  these  cases  are  taken  from  the  Proceed- 
ings of  the  S.  P.  R.,  that  is  to  say,  they 
have  nearly  all  been  very  strictly  investi- 
gated. It  is  impossible,  short  of  filling 
these  pages  with  often  striking  and  touch- 
ing but  rather  cumbersome  anecdotes,  to 
enumerate  them  hete,  however  briefly.  It 
will  be  sufficient  to  note  that  sometimes  the 
dog  begins  to  howl  at  the  exact  moment 
when  his  master  loses  his  life,  for  Instance, 

^Annates  des  sciences  psychiques,  August,  1905,  pp. 
422-469. 

324 


The  Unknown  Guest 

on  a  battlefield,  hundreds  of  miles   from 
the  place  where  the  dog  is.     More  com- 
monly,   the    cat,    the    dog   and    the    horse 
plainly  manifest  that  they  perceive,  often 
before    men     do,     telepathic     apparitions, 
phantasms    of    the    living    or    the    dead. 
Horses  In  particular  seem  very  sensitive  to 
places  that  pass  as  haunted  or  uncanny.    On 
the  whole,  the  result  of  these  observations 
is  that  we  can  hardly  dispute  that  these  ani- 
mals communicate  as  much  as  we  do  and 
perhaps  In  the  same  fashion  with  the  mys- 
tery that  lies  around  us.     There  are  mo- 
ments at  which,  like  man,  they  see  the  in- 
visible and  perceive  events,  influences  and 
emotions  that  are  beyond  the  range  of  their 
normal  senses.    It  is,  therefore,  permissible 
to  believe  that  their  nervous  system  or  some 
remote  or  secret  part  of  their  being  con- 
tains the  same  psychic  elements  connecting 
them  with  an  unknown  that  inspires  them 
with  as  much  terror  as  it  does  ourselves. 

325 


The  Unknown  Guest 

And,  let  us  say  in  passing,  this  terror  Is 
rather  strange;  for,  after  all,  what  have 
they  to  fear  from  a  phantom  or  an  appari- 
tion, they  who,  we  are  convinced,  have  no 
after-life  and  who  ought,  therefore,  to  re- 
main perfectly  indifferent  to  the  manifesta- 
tions of  a  world  in  which  they  will  never 
set  foot? 

I  shall  perhaps  be  told  that  it  is  not 
certain  that  these  apparitions  are  objective, 
that  they  correspond  with  an  external  real- 
ity, but  that  it  is  exceedingly  possible  that 
they  spring  solely  from  the  man's  or  the 
animal's  brain.  This  is  not  the  moment  to 
discuss  this  very  obscure  point,  which  raises 
the  whole  question  of  the  supernatural  and 
all  the  problems  of  the  hereafter.  The 
only  important  thing  to  observe  is  that  at 
one  time  it  is  man  who  transmits  his  ter- 
ror, his  perception  or  his  idea  of  the  in- 
visible to  the  animal  and  at  another  the 
animal   which   transmits   its    sensations   to 

326 


The  Unknown  Guest 

man.  We  have  here,  therefore,  intercom- 
munications which  spring  from  a  deeper 
common  source  than  any  that  we  know  and 
which,  to  issue  from  it  or  go  back  to  it,  pass 
through  other  channels  than  those  of  our 
customary  senses.  Now  all  this  belongs  to 
that  unexplained  sensibility,  to  that  secret 
treasure,  to  that  as  yet  undetermined 
psychic  power  which,  for  lack  of  a  better 
term,  we  call  subconsciousness  or  subliminal 
consciousness.  Moreover,  it  is  not  surpris- 
ing that,  in  the  animals,  these  subliminal 
faculties  not  only  exist,  but  are  perhaps 
keener  and  more  active  than  in  ourselves, 
because  It  is  our  conscious  and  abnormally 
Individualized  life  that  atrophies  them  by 
relegating  them  to  a  state  of  idleness 
wherein  they  have  fewer  and  fewer  oppor- 
tunities of  being  exercised,  whereas  in  our 
brothers  who  are  less  detached  from  the 
universe,  consciousness — if  we  can  give  that 
name  to  a  very  uncertain  and  confused  no- 

2>2y 


The  Unknown  Guest 

tion  of  the  ego — is  reduced  to  a  few  ele- 
mentary actions.  They  are  much  less  sep- 
arated than  ourselves  from  the  whole  of 
the  circumambient  life  and  they  still  pos- 
sess a  number  of  those  more  general  and 
indeterminate  senses  whereof  we  have  been 
deprived  by  the  gradual  encroachment  of 
a  narrow  and  intolerant  special  faculty,  our 
Intelligence.  Among  these  senses  which 
up  to  the  present  we  have  described  as  in- 
stincts, for  want — and  it  is  becoming  a 
pressing  want — of  a  more  suitable  and  defi- 
nite word,  need  I  mention  the  sense  of  di- 
rection, migration,  foreknowledge  of  the 
weather,  of  earthquakes  and  avalanches 
and  many  others  which  we  doubtless  do  not 
even  suspect?  Does  all  this  not  belong  to 
a  subconsciousness  which  differs  from  ours 
only  In  being  so  much  richer? 

I  am  fully  aware  that  this  explanation  by 

328 


The  Unknown  Guest 

means  of  the  subliminal  consciousness  will 
not  explain  very  much  and  will  at  most 
invoke  the  aid  of  the  unknown  to  illuminate 
the  incomprehensible.  But  to  explain  a 
phenomenon,  as  Dr.  J.  de  Modzelwski 
very  truly  says,  "is  to  put  forward  a  theory 
which  is  more  familiar  and  more  easily 
comprehensible  to  us  than  the  phenomenon 
at  issue."  This  is  really  what  we  are  con- 
stantly and  almost  exclusively  doing  in 
physics,  chemistry,  biology  and  in  every 
branch  of  science  without  exception.  To 
explain  a  phenomenon  is  not  necessarily  to 
make  it  as  clear  and  pellucid  as  that  two 
and  two  are  four;  and,  even  so,  the  fact 
that  two  and  two  are  four  is  not,  when  we 
go  to  the  bottom  of  things,  as  clear  and 
pellucid  as  it  seems.  What  in  this  case,  as 
in  most  others,  we  wrongfully  call  explain- 
ing Is  simply  confronting  the  unexpected 
mystery  which  these  horses  offef  us  with  a 
few  phenomena  which  are  themselves  un- 

329 


The  Unknown  Guest 

known,  but  which  have  been  perceived 
longer  and  more  frequently.  And  this 
same  mystery,  thus  explained,  will  serve 
one  day  to  explain  others.  It  is  in  this  way 
that  science  goes  to  work.  We  must  not 
blame  it:  it  does  what  it  can;  and  it  does 
not  appear  that  there  are  other  ways. 

31 

If  we  assent  to  this  explanation  by  means 
of  the  subliminal  consciousness,  which  is  a 
sort  of  mysterious  participation  in  all  that 
happens  in  this  world  and  the  others,  many 
obstacles  disappear  and  we  enter  into  a  new 
region  in  which  we  draw  strangely  nearer 
to  the  animals  and  really  become  their 
brothers  by  closer  links,  perhaps  the  only 
essential  links  in  life.  They  take  part  from 
that  moment  in  the  great  human  problems, 
in  the  extraordinary  actions  of  our  unknown 
guest;  and,  if,  since  we  have  been  observing 
the  indwelling  force  more  attentively,  noth- 

330 


The  Unknown  Guest 

Ing  any  longer  surprises  us  of  that  which  It 
realizes  in  us,  no  more  should  anything 
surprise  us  of  that  which  It  realizes  in  them. 
We  are  on  the  same  plane  with  them,  In 
some  as  yet  undetermined  element,  where  It 
is  no  longer  the  Intelligence  that  reigns 
alone,  but  another  spiritual  power,  which 
pays  no  heed  to  the  brain,  which  passes  by 
other  roads  and  which  might  rather  be  the 
psychic  substance  of  the  universe  Itself,  no 
longer  set  In  grooves.  Isolated  and  spe- 
cialized by  man,  but  diffused,  multiform 
and  perhaps,  if  we  could  trace  it,  equal  in 
everything  that  exists. 

There  is,  henceforth,  no  reason  why  the 
horses  should  not  participate  in  most  of  the 
mediumistic  phenomena  which  we  find  exist- 
ing between  man  and  man;  and  their  mys- 
tery ceases  to  be  distinct  from  those  of  hu- 
man metaphysics.  If  their  subliminal  is 
akin  to  ours,  we  can  begin  by  extending  to 
its    utmost    limits    the    telepathic    theory, 

331 


The  Unknown  Guest 

which  has,  so  to  speak,  no  limits,  for,  in 
the  matter  of  telepathy,  as  Myers  has  said, 
all  that  we  are  permitted  to  declare  Is  that 
"life  has  the  power  of  manifesting  Itself 
to  life."  We  may  ask  ourselves,  therefore, 
If  the  problem  which  I  set  to  the  horse, 
without  knowing  the  terms  of  it.  Is  not  com- 
municated to  my  subliminal,  which  Is  Ig- 
norant of  it,  by  that  of  the  horse,  who  has 
read  it.  It  is  practically  certain  that  this 
Is  possible  between  human  subliminals.  Is 
It  I  who  see  the  solution  and  transmit  It  to 
the  horse,  who  only  repeats  It  to  me?  But, 
suppose  that  It  Is  a  problem  which  I  myself 
am  Incapable  of  solving?  Whence  does 
the  solution  come,  then?  I  do  not  know 
if  the  experiment  has  been  attempted,  under 
the  same  conditions,  with  a  human  medium. 
For  that  matter.  If  it  succeeded,  It  would 
be  very  much  the  same  as  the  no  less  sub- 
liminal phenomenon  of  the  arithmetical 
prodigies,    or   lightning    calculators,    with 

222 


The  Unknown  Guest 

which,  In  this  rather  superhuman  atmos- 
phere, we  are  almost  forced  to  compare  the 
riddle  of  the  mathematical  horses.  Of  all 
the  interpretations,  it  is  the  one  which,  for 
the  moment,  appears  to  me  the  least  eccen- 
tric and  the  most  natural. 

We  have  seen  that  the  gift  of  handling 
colossal  figures  is  almost  foreign  to  the  in- 
telligence proper;  one  can  even  declare 
that,  in  certain  cases,  it  is  evidently  and 
completely  independent  of  such  intelligence. 
In  these  cases,  the  gift  is  manifested  prior 
to  any  education  and  from  the  earliest  years 
of  childhood.  If  we  refer  to  the  hst  of 
arithmetical  prodigies  given  by  Dr.  Scrip- 
ture,^ we  see  that  the  faculty  made  its  ap- 
pearance in  Ampere  at  the  age  of  three,  in 
Colburn  at  six,  in  Gauss  at  three,  in 
Mangiamele  at  ten,  in  Safford  at  six,  in 
Whateley  at  three,  and  so  on.  Generally, 
it   lasts    for  only  a   few  years,   becoming 

^American  Journal  of  Psychology,  i  April   1891. 

333 


The  Unknown  Guest 

rapidly  enfeebled  with  age  and  usually  van- 
ishing suddenly  at  the  moment  when  its  pos- 
sessor begins  to  go  to  school. 

When  you  ask  those  children  and  even 
most  of  the  lightning  calculators  who  have 
come  to  man's  estate  how  they  go  to  work 
to  solve  the  huge  and  complicated  problems 
set  them,  they  reply  that  they  know  noth- 
ing about  it.  Bidder,  for  instance,  declares 
that  it  is  impossible  for  him  to  say  how 
he  can  instinctively  tell  the  logarithm  of  a 
number  consisting  of  seven  or  eight  figures. 
It  is  the  same  with  Safford,  who,  at  the  age 
of  ten,  used  to  do  in  his  head,  without  ever 
making  a  mistake,  multiplication-sums  the 
result  of  which  ran  into  thirty-six  figures. 
The  solution  presents  itself  authoritatively 
and  spontaneously;  it  Is  a  vision,  an  impres- 
sion, an  inspiration,  an  intuition  coming  one 
knows  not  whence,  suddenly  and  indubita- 
bly. As  a  rule,  they  do  not  even  try  to 
calculate.     Contrary  to  the  general  belief, 

334 


The  Unknown  Guest 

they  have  no  peculiar  methods;  or,  if 
method  there  be,  it  is  more  a  practical  way 
of  subdividing  the  intuition.  One  would 
think  that  the  solution  springs  suddenly 
from  the  very  enunciation  of  the  problem, 
in  the  same  way  as  a  veridical  hallucination. 
It  appears  to  rise,  infallible  and  ready- 
done,  from  a  sort  of  eternal  and  cosmic 
reservoir  wherein  the  answers  to  every 
question  lie  dormant.  It  must,  therefore, 
be  admitted  that  we  have  here  a  phenome- 
non that  occurs  above  or  below  the  brain, 
by  the  side  of  the  consciousness  and  the 
mind,  outside  all  the  intellectual  methods 
and  habits;  and  it  is  precisely  for  phenom- 
ena of  this  kind  that  Myers  invented  the 
word  "subliminal."^ 

II  have  no  need  to  recall  the  derivation  of  the  term 
subliminal:  beneath  (sub)  the  threshold  {limen)  of 
consciousness.  Let  us  add,  as  M.  de  Vesme  very 
rightly  remarks,  that  the  subliminal  is  ^not  exactly 
what  classical  psychology  calls  the  subconsciousness, 
which  latter  records  only  notions  that  are  normality 
perceived  and  possesses  only  normal  faculties,  that  is 
to  say,  faculties  recognized  to-day  by  orthodox  science. 

335 


The  Unknown  Guest 

32 
Does  not  all  this  bring  us  a  little  nearer 
to  our  calculating  horses?  From  the  mo- 
ment that  it  is  demonstrated  that  the  solu- 
tion of  a  mathematical  problem  no  longer 
depends  exclusively  on  the  brain,  but  on  an- 
other faculty,  another  spiritual  power 
whose  presence  under  various  forms  has 
been  ascertained  beyond  a  doubt  in  certain 
animals,  it  ceases  to  be  wholly  rash  or  ex- 
travagant to  suggest  that  perhaps,  in  the 
horse,  the  same  phenomenon  is  reproduced 
and  developed  in  the  same  unknown, 
wherein  moreover  the  mysteries  of  numbers 
and  those  of  subconsciousness  mingle  In  a 
like  darkness.  I  am  well  aware  that  an 
explanation  laden  to  such  an  extent  with 
mysteries  explains  but  very  little  more  than 
silence  does;  nevertheless,  it  is  at  least  a 
silence  traversed  by  restless  murmurs  and 
sedulous  whispers  that  are  better  than  the 
gloomy  and  hopeless  ignorance  to  which 

336 


The  Unknown  Guest 

we  would  hav^e  perforce  to  resign  ourselves 
If  we  did  not  struggle,  in  spite  of  all,  to 
perform  the  great  duty  of  man,  which  is 
to  discover  a  spark  in  the  darkness. 

It  goes  without  saying  that  objections  are 
raised  from  every  side.  Among  men,  arith- 
metical prodigies  are  looked  upon  as  mon- 
sters, as  a  sort  of  extremely  rare  teratolog- 
ical  phenomenon.  We  can  count,  at  most, 
half-a-dozen  in  a  century,  whereas,  among 
horses,  the  faculty  would  appear  to  be  al- 
most general,  or  at  least  quite  common.  In 
fact,  out  of  six  or  seven  stallions  whom 
Krall  tried  to  initiate  into  the  secrets  of 
mathematics,  he  found  only  two  that  ap- 
peared to  him  too  poorly  gifted  for  him 
to  waste  time  on  their  education.  These 
were,  I  believe,  two  thoroughbreds  that 
were  presented  to  him  by  the  Grand-duke 
of  Mecklenburg  and  sent  back  by  Krall  to 
their  sumptuous  stables.  In  the  four  or 
five   others,   taken   at   random   as   clrcum- 

337 


The  Unknown  Guest 

stances  supplied  them,  he  met  with  aptitudes 
unequal,  it  is  true,  but  easily  developed  and 
giving  the  impression  that  they  exist  nor- 
mally, latent  and  inactive,  at  the  bottom  of 
every  equine  soul.  From  the  mathematical 
point  of  view,  is  the  horse's  subliminal 
consciousness  then  superior  to  man's?  Why 
not?  His  whole  subliminal  being  is  prob- 
ably superior  to  ours,  of  greater  range, 
younger,  fresher,  more  alive  and  less  heavy, 
since  it  is  not  incessantly  attacked,  coerced 
and  humiliated  by  the  intelligence  which 
gnaws  at  it,  stifles  it,  cloaks  it  and  relegates 
it  to  a  dark  corner  which  neither  light  nor 
air  can  penetrate.  His  subliminal  con- 
sciousness is  always  present,  always  alert; 
ours  is  never  there,  is  asleep  at  the  bottom 
of  a  deserted  well  and  needs  exceptional 
operations,  results  and  events  before  it  can 
be  drawn  from  its  slumber  and  its  unre- 
membered  deeps.  All  this  seems  very  ex- 
traordinary; but,  in  any  case,  we  are  here 

338 


The  Unknown  Guest 

in  the  midst  of  the  extraordinary;  and  this 
outlet  is  perhaps  the  least  hazardous.  It 
is  not  a  question,  we  must  remember,  of  a 
cerebral  operation,  an  intellectual  perform- 
ance, but  of  a  gift  of  divination  closely  al- 
lied to  other  gifts  of  the  same  nature  and 
the  same  origin  which  are  not  the  peculiar 
attribute  of  man.  No  observation,  no  ex- 
periment enables  us,  up  to  the  present,  to 
establish  a  difference  between  the  subliminal 
of  human  beings  and  that  of  animals.  On 
the  contrary,  the  as  yet  restricted  number 
of  actual  cases  reveals  constant  and  striking 
analogies  between  the  two.  In  most  of 
those  arithmetical  operations,  be  it  noted, 
the  subliminal  of  the  horse  behaves  exactly 
like  that  of  the  medium  in  a  state  of  trance. 
The  horse  readily  reverses  the  figures  of 
the  solution;  he  replies,  "37,"  for  instance, 
instead  of  "73,"  which  is  a  mediumistic 
phenomenon  so  well-known  and  so  frequent 
that   it  has  been  styled  "mirror-writing." 

339 


The  Unknown  Guest 

He  makes  mistakes  fairly  often  In  the  most 
elementary  additions  and  subtractions  and 
much  less  frequently  in  the  extraction  of 
the  most  complicated  roots,  which  again,  in 
similar  cases,  such  as  "xenoglossy"  and 
psychometry,  is  one  of  the  eccentricities  of 
human  medlumism  and  is  explained  by  the 
same  cause,  namely,  the  inopportune  inter- 
vention of  the  ever  fallible  Intelligence, 
which,  by  meddling  in  the  matter,  alters  the 
certainties  of  a  subliminal  which,  when  left 
to  Itself,  never  makes  a  mistake.  It  is.  In 
fact,  quite  probable  that  the  horse,  being 
really  able  to  do  the  small  sums,  no  longer 
relies  solely  on  his  Intuition  and,  from  that 
moment,  gropes  and  flounders  about.  The 
solution  hovers  between  the  Intelligence  and 
the  subliminal  and,  passing  from  the  one, 
which  is  not  quite  sure  of  it,  to  the  other, 
which  is  not  urgently  appealed  to,  comes 
out  of  the  conflict  as  best  It  may.  The 
case  Is  the  same  with  the  psychometric  or 

340 


The  Unknown  Guest 

spiritualistic  medium  who  seeks  to  profit  by 
what  he  knows  in  the  ordinary  way,  so  as 
to  complete  the  visions  or  revelations  of  his 
subconscious  sensibility.  He,  too,  in  this 
instance,  is  nearly  always  guilty  of  flagrant 
and  inexplicable  blunders. 

Many  other  similarities  will  be  found  to 
exist,  notably  the  way  in  which  the  lessons 
vary.  Nothing  is  more  uncertain  and  capri- 
cious than  manifestations  of  human  medi- 
umism.  Whether  it  be  a  question  of  auto- 
matic writing,  psychometry,  materializa- 
tions or  anything  else,  we  meet  with  series 
of  sittings  that  yield  none  but  absurd  re- 
sults. Then,  suddenly,  for  reasons  as  yet 
obscure — the  state  of  the  weather,  the  pres- 
ence of  this  or  that  witness,  or  I  know  not 
what — the  most  undeniable  and  bewildering 
manifestations  occur  one  after  the  other. 
The  case  Is  precisely  the  same  with  the 
horses :  their  queer  fancies,  their  unaccount- 
able and  disconcerting   freaks   drive   poor 

341 


The  Unknown  Guest 

Krall  to  despair.  He  never  opens  the  door 
of  that  uncertain  stable,  on  important  days, 
without  a  sinking  at  the  heart.  Let  the 
beard  or  the  frown  of  some  learned  profes- 
sor fail  to  please  the  horses:  they  will, 
forthwith,  take  an  unholy  delight  in  giving 
the  most  Irrelevant  answers  to  the  most  ele- 
mentary questions  for  hours  and  even  days 
on  end. 

Other  common  features  are  the  strongly- 
marked  personality  of  the  medlumistic 
"raps"  and  the  communications  known  as 
"deferred  telepathic  communications,"  that 
is  to  say,  those  In  which  the  answer  is  ob- 
tained at  the  end  of  a  sitting  to  a  question 
put  at  the  beginning  and  forgotten  by  all 
those  present.  What  at  first  sight  seems 
one  of  the  strongest  objections  urged 
against  the  medlumism  of  the  horse  even 
tends  to  confirm  it.  If  the  reply  comes  from 
the  horse's  subconsciousness.  It  has  been 
asked,  how  is  it  that  it  should  be  necessary 

342 


The  Unknown  Guest 

first  to  teach  him  the  elements  of  language, 
mathematics  and  so  forth,  and  that  Berto, 
for  Instance,  is  Incapable  of  solving  the 
same  problems  as  Muhamed?  This  ob- 
jection has  been  very  ably  refuted  by  M.  de 
Vesme,  who  writes : 

"To  produce  automatic  writing,  a  me- 
dium must  have  learnt  to  write;  before 
Victorien  Sardou  or  Mile  Helene  Schmidt 
could  produce  their  medlumistic  drawings 
and  paintings,  they  had  to  possess  an  ele- 
mentary knowledge  of  drawing  and  paint- 
ing; Tartini  would  never  have  composed 
The  Devil's  Sonata  In  a  dream,  if  he  had 
not  known  music;  and  so  forth.  Uncon- 
scious cerebration,  however  wonderful,  can 
only  take  effect  upon  elements  already  ac- 
quired In  some  way  or  another..  The  sub- 
conscious cerebration  of  a  man  blind  from 
birth  will  not  make  him  see  colours." 


343 


The  Unknown  Guest 

Here,  then,  in  this  comparison  which 
might  easily  be  extended,  are  several  fairly 
well-defined  features  of  resemblance.  We 
receive  a  vivid  Impression  of  the  same 
habits,  the  same  contradictions  and  the 
same  eccentricities;  and  we  once  more  rec- 
ognize the  strange  and  majestic  shadow  of 
our  unknown  guest. 

33 

One  great  objection  remains,  based  upon 
the  very  nature  of  the  phenomenon,  upon 
the  really  Insuperable  distance  that  sep- 
arates the  whole  life  of  the  horse  from  the 
abstract  and  impenetrable  life  of  numbers. 
How  can  his  subliminal  consciousness  in- 
terest itself  for  a  moment  in  signs  that 
represent  nothing  to  him,  have  no  relation 
to  his  organism  and  will  never  touch  his 
existence?  But,  in  the  first  place,  it  Is  just 
the  same  with  the  child  or  the  illiterate  cal- 

344 


The  Unknown  Guest 

culator.  He  is  not  interested  either  in  the 
figures  which  he  lets  loose.  He  is  com- 
pletely ignorant  of  the  consequences  of  the 
problems  which  he  solves.  He  juggles  with 
digits  which  have  hardly  any  more  mean- 
ing to  him  than  to  the  horse.  He  is  in- 
capable of  accounting  for  what  he  does; 
and  his  subconsciousness  also  acts  in  a  sort 
of  indifferent  and  remote  dream.  It  is  true 
that,  in  his  case,  we  can  appeal  to  heredity 
and  to  memory;  but  is  this  difference 
enough  to  settle  the  difficulty  and  definitely 
to  separate  the  two  phenomena?  To  ap- 
peal to  heredity  is  still  to  appeal  to  the 
subliminal;  and  it  is  not  at  all  certain  that 
the  latter  is  limited  by  the  interest  of  the 
organism  sheltering  it.  It  appears,  on  the 
contrary,  in  many  circumstances,  to  spread 
and  extend  far  beyond  that  organism  in 
which  it  Is  domiciled,  one  would  say,  acci- 
dentally and  provisionally.  It  likes  to  show, 
apparently,  that  it  is  in  relation  with  all 

J45 


The  Unknown  Guest 

that  exists.  It  declares  itself,  as  often  as 
possible,  universal  and  impersonal.  It  has 
but  a  very  indifferent  care,  as  we  have  seen 
in  the  matter  of  apparitions  and  premoni- 
tions, for  the  happiness  and  even  the  safety 
of  its  host  and  protector.  It  prophesies  to 
its  companion  of  a  lifetime  events  which  he 
cannot  avoid  or  which  do  not  concern  him. 
It  makes  him  see  beforehand,  for  instance, 
all  the  circumstances  of  the  death  of  a 
stranger  whom  he  will  only  hear  of  after 
the  event,  when  this  event  is  irrevocable.  It 
brings  a  crowd  of  barren  presentiments  and 
conjures  up  veridical  hallucinations  that  are 
wholly  alien  and  idle.  With  psychometric, 
typtological  or  materializing  mediums,  it 
practises  art  for  art's  sake,  mocks  at  space 
and  time,  passes  through  personalities,  sees 
through  solid  bodies,  brings  into  communica- 
tion thoughts  and  emotions  worlds  apart, 
reads  souls  and  lives  by  the  light  of  a  flower, 
a  rag  or  a  scrap  of  paper;  and  all  this  for 

346 


The  Unknown  Guest 

nothing,  to  amuse  Itself,  to  astonish  us, 
because  it  adores  the  superfluous,  the  inco- 
herent, the  unexpected,  the  improbable,  the 
bewildering,  or  rather,  perhaps,  because  it 
is  a  huge,  rough,  undisciplined  force  still 
struggling  in  the  darkness  and  coming  to 
the  surface  only  by  wild  fits  and  starts,  be- 
cause it  is  an  enormous  expansion  of  a  spirit 
striving  to  collect  itself,  to  achieve  con- 
sciousness, to  make  itself  of  service  and  to 
obtain  a  hearing.  In  any  case,  for  the  time 
being,  it  appears  just  what  we  have  de- 
scribed, and  would  be  unlike  itself  if  it  be- 
haved any  otherwise  in  the  case  that  puz- 
zles us. 

34 

Lastly,  to  close  this  chapter,  let  us  remark 
that  it  is  nearly  certain  that  the  solution 
given  by  calculating  children  and  horses  is 
not  of  a  mathematical  nature  at  all.  They 
do  not  in  any  way  consider  the  problem  or 

347 


The  Unknown  Guest 

the  sum  to  be  worked.  They  simply  find 
the  answer  straight  away  to  a  riddle,  the 
guessing  of  which  is  made  easy  by  the  actual 
nature  of  figures  which  keep  their  secrets 
badly.  To  any  one  in  the  requisite  state  of 
mind,  it  becomes  a  question  of  a  sort  of 
elementary  charade,  which  hides  its  answer 
only  from  those  who  speak  another  lan- 
guage. It  is  evident  that  every  problem, 
however  complex  it  may  appear,  carries 
within  its  very  enunciation  its  one,  invari- 
able solution,  scarce  veiled  by  the  indiscreet 
signs  that  contain  or  cover  it.  It  is  there, 
under  the  numbers  that  have  no  other  ob- 
ject than  to  give  it  life,  tossing,  stirring  and 
ceaselessly  proclaiming  itself  a  necessity.  It 
is  not  surprising  therefore  that  eyes  sharper 
than  ours  and  ears  open  to  other  vibra- 
tions should  see  and  hear  it  without  know- 
ing what  it  represents,  what  it  implies  or 
from  what  prodigious  mass  of  figures  and 
operations  it  emerges.     The  problem  itself 

348 


The  Unknown  Guest 

speaks;  and  the  horse  but  repeats  the  sign 
which  he  hears  whispered  in  the  mysterious 
life  of  numbers  or  deep  down  in  the  abyss 
where  the  eternal  verities  hold  sway. 
He  understands  none  of  it,  he  has  no  need 
to  understand,  he  is  but  the  unconscious 
medium  who  lends  his  voice  or  his  limbs  to 
the  mind  that  inspires  him.  There  is  here 
but  a  bare  and  simple  answer,  bearing  no 
precise  significance,  seized  in  an  alien  exist- 
ence. There  is  here  but  a  mechanical  reve- 
lation, so  to  speak,  a  sort  of  special  reflex 
which  we  can  only  record  and  which,  for  the 
rest,  is  as  inexplicable  as  any  other  pheno- 
menon of  consciousness  or  instinct.  After 
all,  when  we  think  of  it,  it  is  just  as  aston- 
ishing that  we  should  not  perceive  the  so- 
lution as  it  is  that  we  should  discover  it. 
However,  I  grant  that  all  this  is  but  a  ven- 
turesome interpretation  to  be  taken  for  what 
it  is  worth,  an  experimental  or  interim 
theory  with  which  we  must  needs  content 

349 


The  Unknown  Guest 

ourselves  since  all  the  others  have  hitherto 
been  controverted  by  the  facts. 

35 

Let  us  now  briefly  sum  up  what  these 
Elberfeld  experiments  have  yielded  us. 
Having  put  aside  telepathy  in  the  narrow 
sense — which  perhaps  enters  into  more 
than  one  phenomenon  but  is  not  indispen- 
sable ,to  it,  for  we  see  these  same  phe- 
nomena repeated  when  telepathy  is  prac- 
tically impossible — we  cannot  help  observ- 
ing that,  if  we  deny  the  existence  or  the 
influence  of  the  subliminal,  it  is  all  the  more 
difllicult  to  contest  the  existence  and  the  in- 
tervention of  the  intelligence,  at  any  rate  up 
to  the  extracting  of  roots,  after  which  there 
is  a  steep  precipice  which  ends  in  darkness. 
But,  even  if  we  stop  at  the  roots,  the  sudden 
discovery  of  an  intellectual  force  so  similar 
to  our  own,  where  we  were  accustomed  to 
see  but  an  irremediable   impotency,   is  no 

350 


The  Unknown  Guest 

doubt  one  of  the  most  unexpected  revela- 
tions that  we  have  received  since  the  in- 
visible and  the  unknown  began  to  press 
upon  us  with  a  persistence  and  an  impa- 
tience which  they  had  not  displayed  hereto- 
fore. It  is  not  easy  to  foresee  as  yet  the 
consequences  and  the  promises  of  this  new 
aspect  which  the  great  riddle  of  the  intelli- 
gence is  suddenly  adopting.  But  I  believe 
that  we  shall  soon  have  to  revise  some  of 
the  essential  ideas  which  are  the  founda- 
tions of  our  life  and  that  some  rather 
strange  horizons  are  appearing  out  of  the 
mists  in  the  history  of  psychology,  of  mo- 
rality, of  human  destiny  and  of  many  other 
things. 

36 

So  much  for  the  intelligence.  On  the 
other  hand,  what  we  deny  to  the  intelli- 
gence we  are  constrained  to  grant  to  the 
subliminal ;  and  the  revelation  is  even  more 

351 


The  Unknown  Guest 

disconcerting.  We  should  then  have  to  admit 
that  there  is  in  the  horse — and  hence  most 
probably  in  everything  that  lives  on  this 
earth — a  psychic  power  similar  to  that 
which  is  hidden  beneath  the  veil  of  our 
reason  and  which,  as  we  learn  to  know  it, 
astonishes,  surpasses  and  dominates  our 
reason  more  and  more.  This  psychic 
power,  in  which  no  doubt  we  shall  one  day 
be  forced  to  recognize  the  genius  of  the 
universe  itself,  appears,  as  we  have  often 
observed,  to  be  all-wise,  all-seeing  and  all- 
powerful.  It  has,  when  it  is  pleased  to  com- 
municate with  us  or  when  we  are  allowed  to 
penetrate  into  it,  an  answer  for  every  ques- 
tion and  perhaps  a  remedy  for  every  111. 
We  will  not  enumerate  its  virtues  again.  It 
will  be  enough  for  us  to  recall  with  what 
ease  it  mocks  at  space,  time  and  all  the  ob- 
stacles that  beset  our  poor  human  knowl- 
edge and  understanding.  We  believed  it, 
like  all  that  seems  to  us  superior  and  mar- 

352 


The  Unknown  Guest 

velloLis,  the  intangible,  Inalienable  and  In- 
communicable attribute  of  man,  with  even 
better  reason  than  his  intelligence.  And 
now  an  accident,  strangely  belated.  It  Is 
true,  tells  us  that,  at  one  precise  point,  the 
strangest  and  least  foreseen  of  all,  the 
horse  and  the  dog  draw  more  easily  and 
perhaps  more  directly  than  ourselves  upon 
Its  mighty  reservoirs.  By  the  most  Inex- 
plicable of  anomalies,  though  one  that  Is 
fairly  consistent  with  the  fantastic  charac- 
ter of  the  subliminal,  they  appear  to  have 
access  to  It  only  at  the  spot  that  Is  most 
remote  from  their  habits  and  most  un- 
known to  their  propensities,  for  there  Is 
nothing  In  the  world  about  which  animals 
trouble  less  than  figures.  But  Is  this  not 
perhaps  because  we  do  not  see  what  goes 
on  elsewhere?  It  so  happens  that  the  In- 
finite mystery  of  numbers  can  sometimes 
be  expressed  by  a  very  few  simple  move- 
ments which  are  natural  to  most  animals; 

353 


The  Unknown  Guest 

but  there  is  nothing  to  tell  us  that,  if  we 
could  teach  the  horse  and  the  dog  to  attach 
to  these  same  movements  the  expression  of 
other  mysteries,  they  would  not  draw  upon 
them  with  equal  facility.  It  has  been  suc- 
cessfully attempted  to  give  them  a  more  or 
less  clear  idea  of  the  value  of  a  few  figures 
and  perhaps  of  the  course  and  nature  of 
certain  elementary  operations;  and  this  ap- 
pears to  have  been  enough  to  open  up  to 
them  the  most  secret  regions  of  mathe- 
matics, in  which  every  question  is  an- 
swered beforehand.  It  is  not  wholly  illu- 
sive to  suppose  that,  if  we  could  Impart  to 
them,  for  instance,  a  similar  notion  of  the 
future,  together  with  a  manner  of  convey- 
ing to  us  what  they  see  there,  they  might 
also  have  access  to  strange  visions  of  an- 
other class,  which  are  jealously  kept  from 
us  by  the  too-watchful  guardians  of  our 
Intelligence.  There  is  an  opportunity  here 
for  experiments  which  w^ill  doubtless  prove 

354 


The  Unknown  Guest 

exceedingly  arduous,  for  the  future  is  not 
so  easily  seen  and  above  all  not  so  easily 
interpreted  and  expressed  as  a  number.  It 
is  possible,  moreover,  that,  when  we  know 
how  to  set  about  it,  we  shall  obtain  most 
of  the  human  mediumistic  phenomena:  rap- 
ping, the  moving  of  objects,  materialization 
even  and  Heaven  knows  what  other  sur- 
prises held  in  store  for  us  by  that  astound- 
ing subliminal  to  whose  fancy  there  appears 
to  be  no  bounds.  In  any  case,  if  we  accept 
the  divining  of  numbers,  as  we  are  almost 
forced  to  do,  it  is  almost  certain  that  the 
divining  of  other  matters  must  follow.  An 
unexpected  breach  is  made  in  the  wall  be- 
hind which  He  heaped  the  great  secrets  that 
seem  to  us,  as  our  knowledge  and  our  civi- 
lization increase,  to  become  stronger  and 
more  inaccessible.  True,  it  is  a  narrow 
breach;  but  It  is  the  first  that  has  been 
opened  In  that  part  of  the  hitherto  uncran- 
nled  wall  which  is  not  turned  towards  man- 

355 


The  Unknown  Guest 

kind.    What  will  Issue  through  It  ?    No  one 
can  foretell  what  we  may  hope. 

37 

What  astonishes  us  most  Is  that  this  reve- 
lation has  been  so  long  delayed.  How  are 
we  to  explain  that  man  has  lived  to  this  day 
with  his  domestic  animals  never  suspecting 
that  they  harboured  mediumlstic  or  sub- 
liminal faculties  as  extraordinary  as  those 
which  he  vaguely  felt  himself  to  possess? 
One  would  have  In  this  connection  to  study 
the  mysterious  practices  of  ancient  India 
and  of  Egypt;  the  numerous  and  persistent 
legends  of  animals  talking,  guiding  their 
masters  and  foretelling  the  future;  and, 
nearer  to  ourselves,  in  history  proper,  all 
that  science  of  augury  and  soothsaying 
which  derived  Its  omens  from  the  flight  of 
birds,  the  inspection  of  entrails,  the  appe- 
tite or  attitude  of  the  sacred  or  prophetic 
animals,   among  which  horses  were  often 

3S6 


The  Unknown  Guest 

numbered.  We  here  find  one  of  those  In- 
numerous  instances  of  a  lost  or  anticipated 
power  which  make  us  suspect  that  man- 
kind has  forestalled  or  forgotten  all  that 
we  believe  ourselves  to  be  discovering.  Re- 
member that  there  is  almost  always  some 
distorted,  misapprehended  or  dimly-seen 
truth  at  the  bottom  of  the  most  eccentric 
and  wildest  creeds,  superstitions  and  leg- 
ends. All  this  new  science  of  metaphysics 
or  of  the  investigation  of  our  subconscious- 
ness and  of  unknown  powers,  which  has 
scarcely  begun  to  unveil  its  first  mysteries, 
thus  finds  landmarks  and  defaced  but  recog- 
nizable traces  in  the  old  religions,  the  most 
inexplicable  traditions  and  the  most  ancient 
history.  Besides,  the  probability  of  a  thing 
does  not  depend  upon  undeniably  estab- 
lished precedents.  While  it  is  almost  cer- 
tain that  there  is  nothing  new  under  the 
sun  or  in  the  eternity  preceding  the  suns, 
it  is  quite  possible  that  the  same  forces  do 

357 


The  Unknown  Guest 

not  always  act  with  the  same  energy.  As 
I  observed,  nearly  twenty  years  ago,  in  The 
Treasure  of  the  Humble^  at  a  time  when  I 
hardly  knew  at  all  what  I  know  so  imper- 
fectly to-day: 

"A  spiritual" — I  should  have  said,  a 
psychic — "epoch  is  perhaps  upon  us,  an 
epoch  to  which  a  certain  number  of  analo- 
gies are  found  in  history.  For  there  are 
periods  recorded  when  the  soul,  in  obe- 
dience to  unknown  laws,  seemed  to  rise  to 
the  very  surface  of  humanity,  whence  it 
gave  clearest  evidence  of  its  existence  and 
of  its  power.  ...  It  would  seem,  at  mo- 
ments such  as  these,  as  though  humanity" 
— and,  I  would  add  to-day,  all  that  lives 
with  it  on  this  earth — "were  on  the  point 
of  struggling  from  beneath  the  crushing 
burden  of  matter  that  weighs  it  down." 

One  might  in  fact  believe  that  a  shudder 
which  we  have  not  yet  experienced  is  pass- 

358 


The  Unknown  Guest 

ing  over  everything  that  breathes;  that  a 
new  activity,  a  new  restlessness  is  permeat- 
ing the  spiritual  atmosphere  whidi  sur- 
rounds our  globe;  and  that  the  very  ani- 
mals have  felt  its  thrill.  One  might  say 
that,  by  the  side  of  the  niggardly  private 
spring  which  would  only  supply  our  intelli- 
gence, other  streams  are  spreading  and  ris- 
ing to  the  same  level  in  every  form  of  exist- 
ence. A  sort  of  word  of  command  is  being 
passed  from  rank  to  rank;  and  the  same 
phenomena  are  bursting  forth  in  every 
quarter  of  the  globe  in  order  to  attract  our 
attention,  as  though  the  obstinately  dumb 
genius  that  lay  hidden  in  the  pregnant  si- 
lence of  the  universe,  from  that  of  the 
stones,  the  flowers  and  the  insects  to  the 
mighty  silence  of  the  stars,  were  at  last 
trying  to  tell  us  some  secret  whereby  it 
would  be  better  known  to  us  or  to  itself.  It 
is  possible  that  this  is  but  an  illusion.  Per- 
haps we  are  simply  more  attentive  and  bet- 

359 


The  Unknown  Guest 

ter  informed  than  of  old.  We  learn  at  the 
very  instant  what  happens  in  every  part  of 
our  earth  and  we  have  acquired  ^the  habit 
of  more  minutely  observing  and  examining 
the  things  that  happen.  But  the  illusion 
would  in  this  case  have  all  the  force,  all  the 
value  and  all  the  meaning  of  the  reality  and 
would  enjoin  the  same  hopes  and  the  same 
obligations. 


360 


CHAPTER     V 

THE    UNKNOWN    GUEST 


CHAPTER  V 

THE   UNKNOWN  GUEST 
I 

WE  have  now  studied  certain  manifes- 
tations of  that  which  we  have  called 
in  turn  and  more  or  less  indiscriminately  the 
subconscious  mind,  the  subliminal  conscious- 
ness and  the  unknown  guest,  names  to 
which  we  might  add  that  of  the  superior 
subconsciousness  or  superior  psychism  in- 
vented by  Dr.  Geley.  Granting  that  these 
manifestations  are  really  proved,  it  is  no 
longer  possible  to  explain  them  or  rather 
to  classify  them  without  having  recourse  to 
fresh  theories.  Now  we  can  entertain 
doubts  on  many  points,  we  can  cavil  and 
argue;  but  I  defy  any  one  approaching 
these  facts  in  a  serious  and  honest  spirit 
to  reject  them  all.  It  is  permissible  to  neg- 
*  363 


The  Unknown  Guest 

lect  the  most  extraordinary ;  but  there  are  a 
multitude  of  others  which  have  become  or, 
to  speak  more  accurately,  are  acknowledged 
to  be  as  frequent  and  habitual  as  any  fact 
whatever  in  normal,  everyday  life.  It  is 
not  difficult  to  reproduce  them  at  will,  pro- 
vided we  place  ourselves  in  the  condition 
demanded  by  their  very  nature;  and,  this 
being  so,  there  remains  no  valid  reason  for 
excluding  them  from  the  domain  of  science 
in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word. 

Hitherto,  all  that  we  have  learnt  regard- 
ing these  occurrences  is  that  their  origin  is 
unknown.  It  will  be  said  that  this  is  not 
much  and  that  the  discovery  is  nothing  to 
boast  of.  I  quite  agree:  to  imagine  that 
one  can  explain  a  phenomena  by  saying  that 
it  is  produced  by  an  unknown  agency  would 
indeed  be  childish.  But  it  is  already  some- 
thing to  have  marked  its  source,  not  to  be 
still  lingering  in  the  thick  of  a  fog,  trying 
any  and  every  direction  In  order  to  find  a 

364 


The  Unknown  Guest 

way  out,  but  to  be  concentrating  our  atten- 
tion on  a  single  spot  which  is  the  starting- 
point  of  all  these  wonders,  so  that  at  each 
instant  we  recognize  in  each  phenomenon 
the  characteristic  customs,  methods  or  fea- 
tures of  the  same  unknown  agency.  It  is 
very  nearly  all  that  we  can  do  for  the  mo- 
ment; but  this  first  effort  is  not  wholly  to 
be  despised. 

2 

It  has  seemed  to  us  then  that  it  was  our 
unknown  guest  that  expressed  itself  in  the 
name  of  the  dead  in  table-turning  and  in 
automatic  writing  and  speaking.  This  un- 
known guest  has  appeared  to  us  to  take 
within  us  the  place  of  those  who  are  no 
more,  to  unite  itself  perhaps  with  forces 
that  do  not  die,  to  visit  the  grave  with  the 
object  of  bringing  thence  inexplicable  phan- 
toms which  rise  up  in  front  of  us  fruit- 
lessly or  haunt  our  houses  without  telling 
us  why.     We  have  seen  it,  in  experiments 

365 


The  Unknown  Guest 

in  clairvoyance  and  intuition,  suppressing 
all  the  obstacles  that  banish  or  conceal 
thought  and,  through  bodies  that  have  be- 
come transparent,  reading  in  our  very  souls 
forgotten  secrets  of  the  past,  sentiments 
that  have  not  yet  taken  shape,  intentions  as 
yet  unborn.  We  have  discovered  that  some 
object  once  handled  by  a  person  now  far 
away  is  enough  to  make  it  take  part  in  the 
innermost  life  of  that  person,  to  go  deeper 
and  rise  higher  than  he  does,  to  see  what 
he  sees  and  even  what  he  does  not  see :  the 
landscape  that  surrounds  him,  the  house 
which  he  inhabits  and  also  the  dangers  that 
threaten  him  and  the  secret  passions  by 
which  he  is  stirred.  We  have  surprised 
it  wandering  hither  and  thither,  at  hap- 
hazard, in  the  future,  confounding  it  with 
the  present  and  the  past,  not  conscious  of 
where  it  is  but  seeing  far  and  wide,  know- 
ing perhaps  everything  but  unaware  of  the 

importance  of  what  it  knows,  or  as  yet  in- 

366 


The  Unknown  Guest 

capable  of  turning  It  to  account  or  of  mak- 
ing itself  understood,  at  once  neglectful  and 
overscrupulous,  prolix  and  reticent,  useless 
and  Indispensable.  We  have  seen  It,  lastly, 
although  we  had  hitherto  looked  upon  It  as 
indissolubly  and  unchangeably  human,  sud- 
denly emerge  from  other  creatures  and 
there  reveal  faculties  akin  to  ours,  which 
commune  with  them  deep  down  In  the  deep- 
est mysteries  and  which  equal  them  and 
sometimes  surpass  them  In  a  region  that 
wrongly  appeared  to  us  the  only  really  un- 
assailable province  of  mankind,  I  mean  the 
obscure  and  abstruse  province  of  numbers. 
It  has  many  other  no  less  strange  and 
perhaps  more  important  manifestations, 
which  we  propose  to  examine  in  a  later  vol- 
ume, notably  Its  surprising  therapeutic  vir- 
tues and  Its  phenomena  of  materialization. 
But,  without  expressing  a  premature  judg- 
ment on  what  we  do  not  yet  know,  per- 
haps we   have   sketched  it  with  sufficient 

367 


The  Unknown  Guest 

clearness  in  the  foregoing  pages  to  enable 
us  henceforward  to  disentangle  certain  gen- 
eral and  characteristic  features  from  a  con- 
fusion of  often  contradictory  lines. 

3 

But,  in  the  first  place,  does  it  really  exist, 
this  tragic  and  comical,  evasive  and  un- 
avoidable figure  which  we  make  no  claim  to 
portray,  but  at  most  to  divest  of  some  of  its 
shadows?  It  were  rash  to  affirm  it  too 
loudly ;  but  meanwhile,  in  the  realms  where 
we  suppose  it  to  reign,  everything  happens 
as  though  it  did  exist.  Do  away  with  it 
and  you  are  obliged  to  people  the  world 
and  burden  your  life  with  a  host  of  hypo- 
thetical and  imaginary  beings:  gods,  demi- 
gods, angels,  demons,  saints,  spirits,  shells, 
elementals,  etherial  entities,  interplanetary 
intelligences  and  so  on;  accept  it  and  all 
those  phantoms,  without  disappearing,  for 
they  may  very  well  continue  to  live  in  its 

368 


The  Unknown  Guest 

shadow,  become  superfluous  or  accessory. 
It  Is  not  Intolerant  and  does  not  definitely 
eliminate  any  of  the  hypotheses  by  the  aid 
of  which  man  has  hitherto  striven  to  ex- 
plain what  he  did  not  understand,  hypothe- 
ses which.  In  regard  to  some  matters,  are 
not  Inadmissible,  although  not  one  of  them 
Is  confirmed;  but  It  brings  them  back  to  It- 
self, absorbs  them  and  rules  them  without 
annihilating  them.  If,  for  Instance,  to  se- 
lect the  most  defensible  theory,  one  which 
It  Is  sometimes  difficult  to  dismiss  absolute- 
ly, if  you  insist  that  the  discarnate  spirits 
take  part  In  your  actions,  haunt  your  house, 
Inspire  your  thoughts,  reveal  your  future,  it 
will  answer: 

"That  Is  true,  but  It  is  still  I ;  I  am  dis- 
carnate, or  rather  I  am  not  wholly  Incar- 
nate:  it  Is  only  a  small  part  of  my  being  that 
is  embodied  in  your  flesh;  and  the  rest, 
which  is  nearly  all  of  me,  comes  and  goes 
freely  both  among  those  who  once  were 

369 


The  Unknown  Guest 

and  among  those  who  are  yet  to  be;  and, 
when  they  seem  to  speak  to  you,  it  is  my 
own  speech  that  borrows  their  customs  and 
their  voice  in  order  to  make  you  listen  and 
to  arouse  your  often  slumbering  attention. 
If  you  prefer  to  deal  with  superior  entities 
of  unknown  origin,  with  interplanetary  or 
supernatural  intelligences,  once  more  it  is 
I ;  for,  since  I  am  not  entirely  in  your  body, 
I  must  needs  be  elsewhere;  and  to  be  else- 
where when  one  is  not  held  back  by  the 
weight  of  the  flesh  is  to  be  everywhere  if 
one  so  pleases." 

We  see,  it  has  a  reply  to  everything,  it 
takes  every  name  that  we  wish  and  there  is 
nothing  to  limit  it,  because  it  lives  in  a 
world  wherein  bounds  are  as  illusory  as  the 
useless  words  which  we  employ  on  earth. 

4 

While  it  has  a  reply  to  everything,  cer- 
tain   manifestations    which    it    deliberately 

370 


The  Unknown  Guest 

ascribes  to  the  spirits  have  brought  upon  It 
grave  and  not  undeserved  reproach.  To 
begin  with,  as  Dr.  Maxwell  observes,  it  has 
no  absolutely  fixed  doctrine.  In  nearly 
every  country  In  the  world,  when  It  speaks 
in  the  name  of  the  spirits,  it  declares  that 
they  undergo  reincarnation  and  readily  re- 
lates their  past  existences.  In  England,  on 
the  contrary,  it  usually  asserts  that  they 
do  not  become  reincarnated.  What  does 
this  mean?  Surely  this  ignorance  or  this 
inconsistency  on  the  part  of  that  which  ap- 
pears to  know  everything  is  very  strange! 
And  worse,  sometimes  It  attributes  to  the 
spirits,  sometimes  to  itself  or  any  one  or 
anything  the  revelations  which  It  makes  to 
us.  When  exactly  Is  it  speaking  the  truth? 
At  least  on  two  occasions  out  of  three.  It  de- 
ludes itself  or  deludes  us.  If  it  deceives 
Itself,  if  it  is  mistaken  about  a  matter  in 
which  It  should  be  easy  for  it  to  know  the 
truth,  what  can  it  teach  us  on  the  subject 

371 


The  Unknown  Guest 

of  a  world  of  whose  most  elementary  laws 
It  is  ignorant,  since  it  does  not  even  know 
whether  it  is  itself  or  another  that  speaks 
to  us  in  the  name  of  that  world?  Are  we 
to  believe  that  it  moves  in  the  same  dark- 
ness as  our  poor  superficial  ego,  which  it 
pretends  so  often  to  enlighten  and  which 
it  does  in  fact  inspire  in  most  of  the  great 
events  of  life?  If  it  deceives  us,  why  does 
It  do  so?  We  can  see  no  object:  it  asks  for 
nothing,  not  for  alms,  nor  prayers,  nor 
thoughts,  on  behalf  of  those  whose  mantle 
it  assumes  for  the  sole  purpose  of  leading 
us  astray.  What  is  the  use  of  those  mis- 
chievous and  puerile  pranks,  of  those 
ghastly  graveyard  pleasantries?  It  must 
lie  then  for  the  mere  pleasure  of  lying;  and 
our  unknown  guest,  that  infinite  and  doubt- 
less immortal  subconsciousness  In  which  we 
have  placed  our  last  hopes,  is  after  all  but 
an  imbecile,  a  buffoon  or  a  rank  swindler ! 


zn 


The  Unknown  Guest 

5 
I  do  not  believe  that  the  truth  Is  as  hide- 
ous as  this.  Our  unknown  guest  does  not 
deceive  itself  any  more  than  it  deceives  us; 
but  it  is  we  who  deceive  ourselves.  It  has 
not  the  stage  to  itself;  and  its  voice  is  not 
the  voice  that  sounds  in  our  ears,  which 
were  never  made  to  catch  the  echoes  of  a 
world  that  is  not  like  ours.  If  it  could 
speak  to  us  itself  and  tell  us  what  it  knows, 
we  should  probably  at  that  instant  cease  to 
be  on  this  earth.  But  we  are  immured  in 
our  bodies,  entombed  prisoners  with  whom 
It  cannot  communicate  at  will.  It  roams 
around  the  walls,  it  utters  warning  cries,  It 
knocks  at  every  door,  but  all  that  reaches  us 
Is  a  vague  disquiet,  an  indistinct  murmur 
that  Is  sometimes  translated  to  us  by  a  half- 
awakened  gaoler  who,  like  ourselves,  is  a 
lifelong  captive.  The  gaoler  does  his  best; 
he  has  his  own  way  of  speaking,  his  fa- 
miliar expressions;  he  knows  ours  and,  with 

373 


The  Unknown  Guest 

the  aid  of  the  words  which  he  possesses  and 
those  which  he  hears  repeated,  he  tries  to 
make  us  understand  what  he  hardly  under- 
stands himself.  He  does  not  know  exactly 
whence  the  sounds  come  which  he  hears; 
and,  according  as  tempests,  wars  or  riots 
happen  to  be  uppermost  at  the  moment,  he 
attributes  them  to  the  winds,  to  tramping 
soldiers  or  to  frenzied  crowds.  In  other 
words  and  speaking  without  metaphor,  it 
is  the  medium  who  draws  from  his  habitual 
language  and  from  that  suggested  to  him 
by  his  audience  the  wherewithal  to  clothe 
and  identify  the  strange  presentiments,  the 
unfamiliar  visions  that  come  from  some  un- 
known region.  If  he  believes  that  the  dead 
survive,  he  will  naturally  imagine  that  it  is 
the  dead  who  speak  to  him.  If  he  has  a 
favourite  spirit,  angel,  demon  or  god,  he  will 
express  himself  In  its  name;  if  he  has  no 
preconceived  opinion,  he  will  not  even  al- 
lude to  the  origin  of  the  revelations  which 

374 


The  Unknown  Guest 

he  is  making.  The  inarticulate  language 
of  the  subconsciousness  necessarily  borrows 
that  of  the  normal  consciousness;  and  the 
two  become  confused  into  a  sort  of  shifting 
and  multiform  jargon.  And  our  unknown 
guest,  which  Is  not  thinking  of  delivering  a 
course  of  lectures  upon  its  entity,  but  sim- 
ply giving  us  as  best  it  can  a  more  or  less 
useless  warning  or  a  mark  of  Its  existence, 
seems  to  care  but  little  as  to  the  garments 
in  which  It  Is  rigged  out,  having  indeed  no 
choice  In  the  matter,  for,  either  because  It 
Is  unable  to  manifest  Itself  or  because  we 
are  incapable  of  understanding  it,  it  has  to 
be  content  with  whatever  comes  to  hand. 

Besides,  If  we  attribute  too  exclusively  to 
the  spirits  that  which  comes  from  another 
quarter,  the  mistake  Is  doubtless  no  great 
one  In  Its  eyes;  for  it  is  not  madness  to 
believe  that  It  lives  with  that  which  does 
not  die  in  the  dead  even  as  with  that  which 
does  not  die  In  ourselves,  with  that  which 

375 


The  Unknown  Guest 

does  not  descend  into  the  grave  even  as  with 
that  which  does  not  take  flesh  at  the  hour 
of  birth. 

6 
There  is  no  reason  therefore  to  condemn 
the  other  theories  entirely.  Most  of  them' 
doubtless  contain  something  more  than  a 
particle  of  truth;  in  particular,  the  great 
quarrel  between  the  subconscious  school 
and  the  spiritualists  is  based  on  the  whole 
upon  a  misunderstanding.  It  is  quite  pos- 
sible and  even  very  probable  that  the  dead 
are  all  around  us,  since  it  is  impossible  that 
the  dead  do  not  live.  Our  subconsciousness 
must  mingle  with  all  that  does  not  die  in 
them ;  and  that  which  dies  in  them  or  rather 
disperses  and  loses  all  its  importance  is  but 
the  little  consciousness  accumulated  on  this 
earth  and  kept  up  until  the  last  hour  by  the 
frail  bonds  of  memory.  In  all  those  mani- 
festations of  our  unknown  guest,  it  is  our 
posthumous   ego  that   already  lives   in  us 

376 


The  Unknown  Guest 

while  we  are  still  in  the  flesh  and  at  mo- 
ments joins  that  which  does  not  die  in  those 
who  have  quitted  their  body.  Then  does 
the  existence  of  our  unknown  guest  pre- 
sume the  immortality  of  a  part  of  our- 
selves? Can  one  possibly  doubt  it?  Have 
you  ever  imagined  that  you  would  perish 
entirely?  As  for  me,  what  I  cannot  pic- 
ture is  the  manner  in  which  you  would  pic- 
ture that  total  annihilation.  But,  if  you 
cannot  perish  entirely,  it  is  no  less  certain 
that  those  who  came  before  you  have  not 
perished  either;  and  hence  it  is  not  alto- 
gether improbable  that  we  may  be  able  to 
discover  them  and  to  communicate  with 
them.  In  this  wider  sense,  the  spiritualistic 
theory  is  perfectly  admissible;  but  what  is 
not  at  all  admissible  is  the  narrow  and  piti- 
ful interpretation  which  its  exponents  too 
often  give  it.  They  see  the  dead  crowding 
around  us  like  wretched  puppets  indissol- 
ubly  attached  to  the  insignificant  scene  of 

Z17 


The  Unknown  Guest 

their  death  by  the  thousand  httle  threads 
of  insipid  memories  and  infantile  hobbies. 
They  are  supposed  to  be  here,  blocking  up 
our  homes,  more  abjectly  human  than  if 
they  were  still  alive,  vague,  inconsistent, 
garrulous,  derelict,  futile  and  idle,  tossing 
hither  and  thither  their  desolate  shadows, 
which  are  being  slowly  swallowed  up  by  si- 
lence and  oblivion,  busying  themselves  in- 
cessantly with  what  no  longer  concerns 
them,  but  almost  incapable  of  doing  us  a 
real  service,  so  much  so  that,  in  short,  they 
would  end  by  persuading  us  that  death 
serves  no  purpose,  that  it  neither  purifies 
nor  exalts,  that  it  brings  no  deliverance  and 
that  it  is  indeed  a  thing  of  terror  and  de- 
spair. 

7 

No,  it  is  not  the  dead  who  thus  speak 

and  act.  Besides,  why  bring  them  into  the 
matter  unnecessarily?  I  could  understand 
that  we  should  be  obliged  to  do  so  if  there 

378 


The  Unknown  Guest 

were  no  similar  phenomena  outside  them; 
but  m  the  intuition  and  clairvoyance  of  non- 
spiritualistic  mediums  and  particularly  In 
psychometry  we  obtain  communications  be- 
tween one  subconsciousness  and  another  and 
revelations  of  unknown,  forgotten  or  future 
Incidents  which  are  equally  striking,  thcmgh 
stripped  of  the  vapid  gossip  and  tedious 
reminiscences  with  which  we  are  over- 
whelmed by  defunct  persons  who  are  all  the 
more  jealous  to  prove  their  Identity  Inas- 
much as  they  know  that  they  do  not  exist. 

It  is  Infinitely  more  likely  that  there  Is  a 
strange  medley  of  heterogeneous  forces  In 
the  uncertain  regions  into  which  we  are 
venturing.  The  whole  of  this  ambiguous 
drama,  with  its  incoherent  crowds.  Is  prob- 
ably enacted  round  about  the  dim  estuary 
where  our  normal  consciousness  flows  into 
our  subconsciousness.  The  consciousness 
of  the  medium — for  we  must  not  forget 
that  there  Is  necessarily  always  a  medium 

379 


The  Unknown  Guest 

at  the  sources  of  these  phenomena — the 
consciousness  of  the  medium,  obscured  by 
the  condition  of  trance  but  yet  the  only  one 
that  possesses  our  human  speech  and  can 
make  itself  heard,  takes  in  first  and  almost 
exclusively  what  it  best  understands  and 
what  most  interests  it  in  the  stifled  and 
mutilated  revelations  of  our  unknown 
guest,  which  for  its  part  communicates  with 
the  dead  and  the  living  and  everything  that 
exists.  The  rest,  which  is  the  only  thing 
that  matters,  but  which  is  less  clearand  less 
vivid  because  it  comes  from  afar,  only  ver}' 
rarely  makes  its  difficult  way  through  a 
forest  of  insignificant  talk.  We  may  add 
that  our  subconsciousness,  as  Dr.  Geley 
very  rightly  observes,  is  formed  of  super- 
posed elements,  beginning  with  the  uncon- 
sciousness that  governs  the  instinctive  move- 
ments of  the  organic  life  of  both  the  species 
and  the  individual  and  passing  by  imper- 
ceptible degrees  till  it  rises  to  the  superior 

380 


The  Unknown  Guest 

psychism  whose  power  and  extent  appear 
to  have  no  bounds.  The  voice  of  the  me- 
dium, or  that  which  we  hear  within  our- 
selves when,  at  certain  moments  of  excite- 
ment or  crisis  in  our  lives,  we  become  our 
own  medium,  has  therefore  to  traverse 
three  worlds  or  three  provinces :  that  of  the 
atavistic  instincts  which  connect  us  with  the 
animal;  that  of  human  or  empirical  con- 
sciousness; and  lastly  that  of  our  unknown 
guest  or  our  superior  subconsciousness, 
which  links  us  to  immense  invisible  realities 
and  which  we  may,  if  we  wish,  call  divine 
or  superhuman.  Hence  it  is  not  surprising 
that  the  intermediary,  be  he  spiritualist,  au- 
tonomist, palingenesist  or  what  he  will, 
should  lose  himself  in  those  wild  and 
troubled  eddies  and  that  the  truth  or  mes- 
sage which  he  brings  us,  tossed  and  tum- 
bled in  every  direction,  should  reach  us 
broken,  shattered  and  pulverized  beyond 
recognition. 

381 


The  Unknown  Guest 

For  the  rest,  I  repeat,  were  it  not  for  the 
absurd  prominence  given  to  our  dead  in  the 
spiritualistic  interpretation,  this  question  of 
origin  would  have  little  importance,  since 
both  life  and  death  are  incessantly  joining 
and  uniting  in  all  things.  There  are  as- 
suredly dead  people  in  all  these  manifes- 
tations, seeing  that  we  are  full  of  dead  peo- 
ple and  that  the  greater  part  of  ourselves 
is  at  this  moment  steeped  in  death,  that  is 
to  say,  is  already  living  the  boundless  life 
that  awaits  us  on  the  farther  side  of  the 
grave. 

8 

We  should  be  wrong,  however,  to  fix  all 
our  attention  on  these  extraordinary  phe- 
nomena, either  those  with  which  we  unduly 
connect  the  deceased  or  those  no  less  strik- 
ing ones  in  which  we  do  not  believe  that 
they  take  part.  They  are  evidently  prec- 
ious points  of  emergence  that  enable  us  ap- 
proximately to  mark  the  extent,  the  forms 

382 


The  Unknown  Guest 

and  the  habits  of  our  mystery.  But  it  is 
within  ourselves,  in  the  silence  of  the  dark- 
ness of  our  being,  where  it  is  ever  in  mo- 
tion, guiding  our  destiny,  that  we  should 
strive  to  surprise  that  mystery  and  to  dis- 
cover it.  And  I  am  not  speaking  only  of  the 
dreams,  the  presentiments,  the  vague  in- 
tuitions, the  more  or  less  brilliant  inspira- 
tions which  are  so  many  more  manifesta- 
tions, specific  as  it  were  and  analogous  with 
those  that  have  occupied  us.  There  is  an- 
other, a  more  secret  and  much  more  active 
existence  which  we  have  scarcely  begun  to 
study  and  which  is,  if  we  descend  to  the 
bed-rock  of  truth,  our  only  real  existence. 
From  the  darkest  corners  of  our  ego  It 
directs  our  veritable  life,  the  one  that  is  not 
to  die,  and  pays  no  heed  to  our  thought  or 
to  anything  emanating  from  our  reason, 
which  believes  that  it  guides  our  steps.  It 
alone  knows  the  long  past  that  preceded 
our  birth  and  the  endless  future  that  will 

383 


The  Unknown  Guest 

follow  our  departure  from  this  earth.  It  is 
itself  that  future  and  that  past,  all  those 
from  whom  we  have  sprung  and  all  those 
who  will  spring  from  us.  It  represents  in 
the  individual  not  only  the  species  but  that 
which  preceded  it  and  that  which  will  fol- 
low it;  and  it  has  neither  beginning  nor 
end:  that  is  why  nothing  touches  it,  noth- 
ing moves  it  which  does  not  concern  that 
which  it  represents.  When  a  misfortune  or  a 
joy  befalls  us,  it  knows  their  value  instantly, 
knows  if  they  are  going  to  open  or  to  close 
the  wells  of  life.  It  is  the  one  thing  that 
is  never  wrong.  In  vain  does  reason  demon- 
strate to  it,  by  irresistible  arguments, 
that  it  is  hopelessly  at  fault:  silent  un- 
der its  immovable  mask,  whose  expression 
we  have  not  yet  been  able  to  read,  it  pur- 
sues its  way.  It  treats  us  as  insignificant 
children,  void  of  understanding,  never  an- 
swers our  objections,  refuses  what  we  ask 
and  lavishes  upon  us  that  which  we  refuse. 

384 


The  Unknown  Guest 

If  we  go  to  the  right,  it  reconducts  us  to  the 
left.  If  we  cultivate  this  or  that  faculty 
which  we  think  that  we  possess  or  which  we 
would  like  to  possess,  it  hides  it  under  some 
other  which  we  did  not  expect  and  did  not 
wish  for.  It  saves  us  from  a  danger  by  im- 
parting to  our  limbs  unforeseen  and  unerr- 
ing movements  and  actions  which  they  had 
never  made  before  and  which  are  contrary 
to  those  which  they  had  been  taught  to 
make:  it  knows  that  the  hour  has  not  yet 
come  when  it  will  be  useless  to  defend  our- 
selves. It  chooses  our  love  in  spite  of  the 
revolt  of  our  intelligence  or  of  our  poor, 
ephemeral  heart.  It  smiles  when  we  are 
frightened  and  sometimes  it  is  frightened 
when  we  smile.  And  it  is  always  the  win- 
ner, humiliating  our  reason,  crushing  our 
wisdom  and  silencing  arguments  and  pas- 
sions alike  with  the  contemptuous  hand  of 
destiny.  The  greatest  doctors  surround 
our  sick-bed  and  deceive  themselves  and  us 

385 


The  Unknown  Guest 

in  foretelling  our  death  or  our  recovery:  it 
alone  whispers  in  our  ear  the  truth  that  will 
not  be  denied.  A  thousand  apparently  mor- 
tal blows  fall  upon  our  head  and  not  a  lash 
of  its  eyelids  quivers;  but  suddenly  a  tiny 
shock,  which  our  senses  had  not  even  trans- 
mitted to  our  brain,  wakes  it  with  a  start. 
It  sits  up,  looks  around  and  understands. 
It  has  seen  the  crack  in  the  vault  that  sepa- 
rates the  two  lives.  It  gives  the  signal  for 
departure.  Forthwith  panic  spreads  from 
cell  to  cell ;  and  the  innumerous  city  that  we 
are  utters  yells  of  horror  and  distress  and 
hustles  around  the  gates  of  death. 

9 

That  great  figure,  that  new  being  has 
been  there,  in  our  darkness,  from  all  time, 
though  its  awkward  and  extravagant  ac- 
tions, until  recently  attributed  to  the  gods, 
the  demons  or  the  dead,  are  only  now  ask- 
ing for  our  serious  attention.     It  has  been 

386 


The  Unknown  Guest 

likened  to  an  immense  block  of  which  our 
personality  is  but  a  diminutive  facet;  to  an 
iceberg  of  which  we  see  a  few  glistening 
prisms  that  represent  our  life,  while  nine- 
tenths  of  the  enormous  mass  remain  buried 
in  the  shadows  of  the  sea.  According  to 
Sir  Oliver  Lodge,  it  is  that  part  of  our  be- 
ing that  has  not  become  carnate;  according 
to  Gustave  Le  Bon,  it  is  the  "condensed" 
soul  of  our  ancestors,  which  is  true,  beyond 
a  doubt,  but  only  a  part  of  the  truth,  for 
we  find  in  it  also  the  soul  of  the  future  and 
probably  of  many  other  forces  which  are 
not  necessarily  human.  William  James 
saw  in  it  a  diffuse  cosmic  consciousness  and 
the  chance  intrusion  into  our  scientifically- 
organized  world  of  remnants  and  vestiges 
of  the  primordial  chaos.  Here  are  a  num- 
ber of  images  striving  to  give  us  an  idea 
of  a  reality  so  vast  that  we  are  unable  to 
grasp  it.  It  is  certain  that  what  we  see 
from  our  terrestrial  life  is  nothing  com- 

387 


The  Unknown  Guest 

pared  with  what  we  do  not  see.  Besides, 
if  we  think  of  it,  it  would  be  monstrous 
and  inexplicable  that  we  should  be  only 
what  we  appear  to  be,  nothing  but  our- 
selves, whole  and  complete  in  ourselves, 
separated,  isolated,  circumscribed  by  our 
body,  our  mind,  our  consciousness,  our  birth 
and  our  death.  We  become  possible  and 
probable  only  on  the  conditions  that  we  pro- 
ject beyond  ourselves  on  every  side  and  that 
we  stretch  in  every  direction  throughout 
time  and  space. 

lO 

But  how  shall  we  explain  the  incredible 
contrast  between  the  immeasurable  gran- 
deur of  our  unknown  guest,  the  assurance, 
the  calmness,  the  gravity  of  the  Inner  life 
which  It  leads  in  us  and  the  puerile  and 
sometimes  grotesque  Incongruities  of  what 
one  might  call  Its  public  existence?  Inside 
us,  it  is  the  sovereign  judge,  the  supreme 

388 


The  Unknown  Guest 

arbiter,  the  prophet,  almost  the  god  omni- 
potent; outside  us,  from  the  moment  that 
it  quits  its  shelter  and  manifests  itself  in 
external  actions,  it  is  nothing  more  than  a 
fortune-teller,  a  bone-setter,  a  sort  of  face- 
tious conjuror  or  telephone-operator,  I  was 
on  the  verge  of  saying  a  mountebank  or 
clown.  At  what  particular  instant  is  it 
really  itself?  Is  it  seized  with  giddiness 
when  it  leaves  its  lair?  Is  it  we  who  no 
longer  hear  it,  who  no  longer  understand  it, 
as  soon  as  it  ceases  to  speak  in  a  whisper 
and  to  act  in  the  dark  recesses  of  our  life? 
Are  we  in  regard  to  it  the  terrified  hive  in- 
vaded by  a  huge  and  inexplicable  hand,  the 
maddened  ant-hill  trampled  by  a  colossal 
and  incomprehensible  foot?  Let  us  not 
venture  yet  to  solve  the  strange  riddle  with 
the  aid  of  the  little  that  we  know.  Let  us 
confine  ourselves,  for  the  moment,  to  noting 
on  the  way  some  other,  rather  easier  ques- 
tions which  we  can  at  least  try  to  answer. 

389 


The  Unknown  Guest 

First  of  all,  are  the  facts  at  issue  really 
new?  Was  it  only  yesterday  that  the  exist- 
ence of  our  unknown  guest  and  its  external 
manifestations  were  revealed  to  us?  Is  it 
our  attention  that  makes  them  appear  more 
numerous,  or  is  it  the  increase  in  their  num- 
ber that  at  last  attracts  our  attention? 

It  does  indeed  seem  that,  however  far  we 
go  back  in  history,  we  everywhere  find  the 
same  extraordinary  phenomena,  under 
other  names  and  often  in  a  more  glamorous 
setting.  Oracles,  prophecies,  incantations, 
haruspicatlon,  "possession,"  evocation  of 
the  dead,  apparitions,  ghosts,  miraculous 
cures,  levltation,  transmission  of  thought, 
apparent  resurrections  and  the  rest  are  the 
exact  equivalent,  though  magnified  by  the 
aid  of  plentiful  and  obvious  frauds  of  our 
latter-day  supernaturallsm.  Turning  In  an- 
other direction,  we  are  able  to  see  that  psy- 
chical phenomena  are  very  evenly  distrib- 
uted over  the  whole  surface  of  the  globe. 

390 


The  Unknown  Guest 

At  all  events,  there  does  not  appear  to  be 
any  race  that  is  absolutely  or  peculiarly  re- 
fractory to  them.  One  would  be  inclined 
to  say,  however,  that  they  manifest  them- 
selves by  preference  among  the  most  civil- 
ized nations — perhaps  because  that  is 
where  they  are  most  carefully  sought  after 
— and  among  the  most  primitive.  In  short, 
it  cannot  be  denied  that  we  are  in  the  pres- 
ence of  faculties  or  senses,  more  or  less 
latent  but  at  the  same  time  universally  dis- 
tributed, which  form  part  of  the  general 
and  unvarying  inheritance  of  mankind. 
But  have  these  faculties  or  senses  under- 
gone evolution,  like  most  of  the  others? 
And,  if  they  have  not  done  so  on  our  earth, 
do  they  show  traces  of  an  extraplanetary 
evolution?  Is  there  progress  or  reaction? 
Are  they  withered  and  useless  branches,  or 
buds  swollen  with  sap  and  promise?  Are 
they  retreating  before  the  march  of  intelli- 
gence or  invading  its  domain? 

391 


The  Unknown  Guest 

II 

M.  Ernest  Bozzano,  one  of  the  most 
learned,  most  daring  and  most  subtle  ex- 
ponents of  the  new  science  that  Is  In  process 
of  formation,  In  the  course  of  a  remarkable 
essay  In  the  Annates  des  sciences  psychi- 
qiies,^  gives  It  as  his  opinion  that  they  have 
remained  stationary  and  unchanged.  He 
considers  that  they  have  become  In  no  way 
diffused,  generalized  and  refined,  like  so 
many  others  that  are  much  less  Important 
and  useful  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
struggle  for  life,  such  as  the  musical  fac- 
ulty, for  Instance.  It  does  not  even  seem, 
says  M.  Bozzano,  that  it  Is  possible  to 
cultivate  or  develop  them  systematically. 
The  Hindu  races  In  particular,  who  for 
thousands  of  years  have  been  devoting 
themselves  to  the  study  of  these  manifesta- 
tions, have  arrived  at  nothing  but  a  better 
knowledge  of  the  empirical  methods  cal- 

^September  1906. 

392 


The  Unknown  Guest 

culated  to  produce  them  in  individuals  al- 
ready endowed  with  these  supernormal 
faculties.  I  do  not  know  to  what  extent  M. 
Bozzano's  assertions  are  beyond  dispute. 
They  concern  historical  or  remote  facts 
which  it  is  very  difficult  to  verify.  In  any 
case,  it  is  something  to  have  perfected,  as 
has  been  done  in  India,  the  empirical 
methods  favourable  to  the  production  of 
supernormal  phenomena.  One  might  even 
say  that  it  is  about  all  that  we  have  the 
right  to  expect,  seeing  that,  by  the  author's 
own  admission,  these  faculties  are  latent  in 
every  man  and  that,  as  has  frequently  been 
seen,  it  needs  but  an  illness,  a  lesion,  or 
sometimes  even  the  slightest  emotion  or  a 
mere  passing  faintness  to  make  them  sud- 
denly reveal  themselves  in  an  individual 
who  seemed  most  hopelessly  devoid  of 
them.  It  is  therefore  quite  possible  that, 
by  improving  the  methods,  by  attacking  the 
mystery  from  other  quarters,  we  might  ob- 

393 


The  Unknown  Guest 

tain  more  decisive  results  than  the  Hindus. 
We  must  remember  that  our  western  science 
has  but  lately  interested  itself  in  these  prob- 
lems and  that  it  has  means  of  investigating 
and  experimenting  which  the  Asiatics  never 
possessed.  It  may  even  be  declared  that  at 
no  time  in  the  existence  of  our  world  has 
the  scientific  mind  been  better-equipped, 
better-suited  to  cope  with  every  task,  or 
more  exact,  more  skilful  and  more  penetra- 
ting than  it  is  to-day.  Because  the  orien- 
tal empirics  have  failed,  there  is  no  reason 
to  believe  that  it  will  not  succeed  in  awaken- 
ing and  cultivating  in  every  man  those 
faculties  which  would  often  be  of  greater 
use  to  him  than  those  of  the  intellect  itself. 
It  is  not  overbold  to  suggest  that,  from 
certain  points  of  view,  the  true  history  of 
mankind  has  hardly  begun. 

12 

Nevertheless,  in  so  far  as  concerns  the 

394 


The  Unknown  Guest 

natural  evolution  of  those  faculties,  M. 
Bozzano's  assertion  seems  fairly  well-justi- 
fied. We  do  not,  in  fact,  observe  a  start- 
ling or  even  appreciable  difference  between 
what  they  were  and  what  they  are.  And 
this  anomaly  is  the  more  surprising  In  as 
much  as  it  is  almost  universally  accepted 
that  a  sense  or  a  faculty  becomes  developed 
in  proportion  to  its  usefulness;  and  there 
are  few,  I  think,  that  would  have  been  not 
only  more  useful  but  even  more  necessary 
to  man.  He  has  always  had  a  keen  and 
primitive  interest  in  knowing  without  de- 
lay the  most  secret  thoughts  of  his  fellow- 
man,  who  is  often  his  adversary  and  some- 
times his  mortal  enemy.  He  has  always 
had  an  interest  no  less  great  In  immediately 
transmitting  those  thoughts  through  space. 
In  seeing  beyond  the  continents  and  seas,  in 
going  back  into  the  past,  in  advancing  into 
the  future,  in  being  able  to  find  In  his  mem- 
ory at  will  not  only  all  the  acquirements  of 

395 


The  Unknown  Guest 

his  personal  experience  but  also  those  of 
his  ancestors,  in  communicating  with  the 
dead  and  perhaps  with  the  sovereign  intel- 
ligence diffused  over  the  universe,  in  discov- 
ering hidden  springs  and  treasures,  in  escap- 
ing the  harsh  and  depressing  laws  of  matter 
and  gravity,  in  relieving  pain,  in  curing  the 
greater  number  of  his  disorders  and  even 
in  restoring  his  limbs,  not  to  mention  many 
other  miracles  which  he  could  work  if  he 
knew  all  the  mighty  forces  that  doubtless 
slumber  in  the  dark  recesses  of  his  life. 

Is  this  once  more  an  unexpected  charac- 
ter of  the  eccentric  physiology  of  our  un- 
known guest?  Here  are  faculties  more 
precious  than  the  most  precious  faculties 
that  have  made  us  what  we  are,  faculties 
whose  magic  buds  sprout  on  every  side  un- 
derneath our  intelligence  but  have  never 
burst  into  flower,  as  though  a  wind  from 
another  sphere  had  killed  them  with  its  icy 
breath.     Is  it  because  it  occupies  itself  first 

396 


The  Unknown  Guest 

and  foremost  with  the  species  that  it  thus 
neglects  the  individual?  But,  after  all,  the 
species  is  only  an  aggregate  of  successive 
individuals;  and  its  evolution  consequently 
depends  upon  their  evolution.  There  would 
therefore  have  been  an  evident  advantage 
to  the  species  in  developing  faculties  that 
would  perhaps  have  carried  it  much  far- 
ther and  much  higher  than  has  been  done 
by  its  brain-power,  which  alone  has  pro- 
gressed. If  there  is  no  evolution  for  them 
here,  do  they  develop  elsewhere?  What 
are  those  powers  which  exist  outside  and 
independent  of  the  laws  of  this  earth?  Do 
they  then  belong  to  other  worlds?  But,  if 
so,  what  are  they  doing  in  ours?  One 
would  sometimes  think,  at  the  sight  of  so 
much  neglectfulness,  uncertainty  and  incon- 
sistency, that  man's  evolution  had  been  in- 
tentionally retarded  by  a  superior  will,  as 
though  that  will  feared  that  he  was  going 
too  fast,  that  he  was  anticipating  some  pre- 

397 


The  Unknown  Guest 

established  order  and  moving  prematurely 
out  of  his  appointed  plane. 

13 

And  the  riddles  accumulate  which  we 
cannot  hope  to  solve.  It  has  been  said  that 
these  abnormal  faculties  are  communica- 
tions or  infiltrations,  themselves  abnormal, 
which  have  found  their  way  through  the 
partitions  that  separate  our  consciousness 
from  our  subconsciousness.  This  is  very 
likely,  but  it  is  only  a  minor  side  of  the 
question.  It  would  be  important  before  all 
to  know  what  that  subconsciousness  repre- 
sents, whither  it  tends  and  with  what  it  it- 
self is  communicating.  Is  the  cerebral 
form  of  knowledge  a  necessary  or  an  acci- 
dental stage?  Is  the  impersonal  form 
which  it  takes  in  the  subconsciousness  the 
only  true  one?  Is  there  really,  as  every- 
thing seems  to  prove,  a  hopeless  incompati- 
bility between  our  intellectual  faculties  and 

398 


The  Unknown  Guest 

those  faculties  of  uncertain  origin,  to  such 
an  extent  that  the  latter  are  unable  to  mani- 
fest themselves  except  when  the  former  are 
weakened  or  temporarily  suspended?  It 
has,  at  any  rate,  been  observed  that  they 
are  hardly  ever  exercised  simultaneously. 
Are  we  to  believe  that,  at  a  given  moment, 
mankind  or  the  genius  that  presides  over  its 
destinies  had  to  make  an  exclusive  and  aw- 
ful choice  between  cerebral  energy  and  the 
mysterious  forces  of  the  subconsciousness 
and  that  we  still  find  traces  of  Its  hesita- 
tions in  our  organism  ?  What  would  have 
become  of  a  race  of  men  in  which  the  sub- 
consciousness had  triumphed  over  the 
brain?  Is  not  this  the  case  with  animals; 
and  would  not  the  race  have  remained 
purely  animal  ?  Or  else  would  not  this  pre- 
ponderance of  a  subconscious  element  more 
powerful  than  that  of  the  animals  and  al- 
most independent  of  our  body  have  re- 
sulted in  the  disappearance  of  life  as  we 

399 


The  Unknown  Guest 

know  it;  and  should  we  not  even  now  be 
leading  the  life  which  we  shall  probably 
lead  when  we  are  dead?  Here  are  a  num- 
ber of  questions  to  which  there  are  no  an- 
swers and  which  are  nevertheless  perhaps 
not  so  idle  as  one  might  at  first  believe. 

Amidst  this  antagonism,  whose  triumph 
are  we  to  hope  for?  Is  any  alliance  be- 
tween the  two  opposing  forces  for  ever  Im- 
possible so  long  as  we  are  in  the  flesh? 
What  are  we  to  do  meanwhile?  If  a 
choice  be  inevitable,  which  way  will  our 
choice  incline;  and  which  victim  shall  we 
sacrifice?  Shall  we  listen  to  those  who  tell 
us  that  there  is  nothing  more  to  be  gained 
or  learnt  in  those  inhospitable  regions 
where  all  our  bewildering  phenomena  have 
been  known  since  man  first  was  man?  Is 
it  true  that  occultism — as  it  is  very  improp- 
erly  called,    for  the   knowledge  which   it 

400 


The  Unknown  Guest 

seeks  Is  no  more  occult  than  any  other — 
is  it  true  that  occultism  Is  marking  time, 
that  it  is  becoming  hopelessly  entangled  In 
the  same  doubtful  facts  and  that  It  has  not 
taken  a  single  step  forward  since  Its  rena- 
scence more  than  fifty  years  ago  ?  One  must 
be  entirely  ignorant  of  the  wonderful  efforts 
of  those  fruitful  years  to  venture  upon 
such  an  assertion.  This  is  not  the  place  to 
discuss  the  question,  which  would  require 
full  and  careful  treatment;  but  we  may 
safely  say  that  until  now  there  is  no  science 
which  in  so  short  a  time  has  brought  order 
out  of  such  a  chaos,  ascertained,  checked 
and  classified  such  a  quantity  of  facts,  or 
more  rapidly  awakened,  cultivated  and 
trained  in  man  certain  faculties  which  he 
,  had  never  seriously  been  believed  to  pos- 
sess; and  furthermore  none  which  has 
caused  to  be  recognized  as  incontestable 
and  thus  introduced  Into  the  circle  of  the 

realities  whereon  we  base  our  lives  a  num- 

401 


The  Unknown  Guest 

ber  of  unlikely  phenomena  which  had 
hitherto  been  contemptuously  passed  over. 
We  are  still,  it  is  true,  waiting  for  the  do- 
mestication of  the  new  force,  its  practical 
application  to  daily  use.  We  are  still  wait- 
ing for  the  all-revealing,  decisive  manifes- 
tation which  will  remove  our  last  doubts 
and  throw  light  upon  the  problem  down  to 
its  very  source.  But  let  us  admit  that  we 
are  likewise  waiting  for  this  manifestation 
in  the  great  majority  of  sciences.  In  any 
case,  we  are  already  in  the  presence  of  an 
astonishing  mass  of  well-weighed  and  veri- 
fied materials  which,  until  now,  had  been 
taken  for  the  refuse  of  dreams,  fragments 
of  wild  legends,  meaningless  and  unimpor- 
tant. For  more  than  three  centuries,  the 
science  of  electricity  remained  at  very  much 
the  same  point  at  which  our  psychical 
sciences  stand  to-day.  Men  were  record- 
ing, accumulating,  trying  to  interpret  a  host 

of  odd  and  futile  phenomena,  toying  with 

402 


The  Unknown  Guest 

Ramsden's  machine,  with  Leyden  jars,  with 
Volta's  rough  battery.  They  thought  that 
they  had  discovered  an  agreeable  pastime, 
an  ingenious  plaything  for  the  laboratory  or 
study;  and  they  had  not  the  slightest  sus- 
picion that  they  were  touching  the  sources 
of  an  universal,  irresistible,  inexhaustible 
power,  invisibly  present  and  active  in  all 
things,  that  would  soon  invade  the  surface 
of  our  globe.  Nothing  tells  us  that  the 
psychic  forces  of  which  we  are  beginning 
to  catch  a  glimpse  have  not  similar  sur- 
prises in  store  for  us,  with  this  difference, 
that  we  are  here  concerned  with  energies 
and  mysteries  which  are  loftier,  grander 
and  doubtless  fraught  with  graver  conse- 
quences, since  they  affect  our  eternal  des- 
tinies, traverse  alike  our  life  and  our  death 
and  extend  beyond  our  planet. 

15 

It  is  not  true  therefore  that  the  psychical 

403 


The  Unknown  Guest 

sciences  have  said  their  last  word  and  that 
we  have  nothing  more  to  expect  from  them. 
They  have  but  just  awakened  or  reawak- 
ened; and,  to  postdate  Guyau's  prediction 
by  a  hundred  years,  we  might  say,  with 
them  in  our  minds,  that  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury "will  end  with  discoveries  as  ill-formu- 
lated but  perhaps  as  important  in  the  moral 
world  as  those  of  Newton  and  Laplace  in 
the  astronomical  world."  But,  though  we 
have  much  to  hope  from  them,  that  is  no 
reason  why  we  should  look  to  them  for 
everything  and  abandon  In  their  favour 
that  which  has  brought  us  where  we  are. 
The  choice  of  which  we  spoke,  between  the 
brain  and  the  subconsciousness,  has  been 
made  long  ago;  and  it  is  not  our  part  to 
make  It  over  again.  We  are  carried  along 
by  a  force  acquired  In  the  course  of  two  or 
three  thousand  years;  and  our  methods,  like 
our  intellectual  habits,  have  of  themselves 
become  transformed  Into  a  sort  of  minor 

404 


The  Unknown  Guest 

subconsciousness  superposed  upon  the 
major  subconsciousness  and  sometimes  min- 
gling with  it.  Henri  Bergson,  in  his  very- 
fine  presidential  address  to  the  Society  for 
Psychical  Research  on  the  28th  of  May, 
19 13,  said  that  he  had  sometimes  won- 
dered what  would  have  happened  If  mod- 
ern science,  instead  of  setting  out  from 
mathematics,  Instead  of  bringing  all  its 
forces  to  converge  on  the  study  of  matter, 
had  begun  by  the  consideration  of  mind; 
If  Kepler,  Galileo  and  Newton,  for  In- 
stance, had  been  psychologists: 

"We  should  certainly,"  said  he,  "have 
had  a  psychology  of  which  to-day  we  can 
form  no  Idea,  any  more  than  before  Galileo 
we  could  have  Imagined  what  our  physics 
would  be;  a  psychology  that  probably 
would  have  been  to  our  present  psychology 
what  our  physics  Is  to  Aristotle's.  Foreign 
to  every  mechanistic  Idea,  not  even  conceiv- 
ing the  possibility  of  such  an  explanation, 

405 


The  Unknown  Guest 

science  would  have  enquired  into,  instead  of 
dismissing  a  priori,  facts  such  as  those 
which  you  study;  perhaps  'psychical  re- 
search' would  have  stood  out  as  its  princi- 
pal preoccupation.  The  most  general  laws 
of  mental  activity  once  discovered  (as,  in 
fact,  the  fundamental  laws  of  mechanics 
were  discovered),  we  should  have  passed 
from  mind,  properly  so-called,  to  life;  bi- 
ology would  have  been  constituted,  but  a 
vitalist  biology,  quite  different  from  ours, 
which  would  have  sought  behind  the  sen- 
sible forms  of  living  beings  the  inward, 
invisible  force  of  which  the  sensible  forms 
are  the  manifestations." 

It  would  therefore  in  the  very  first  days 
of  its  activity  have  encountered  all  these 
strange  problems:  telepathy,  materializa- 
tions, clairvoyance,  miraculous  cures, 
knowledge  of  the  future,  the  possibility  of 
survival,    interplanetary    intelligence    and 

many  others,  which  it  has  neglected  hither- 

406 


The  Unknown  Guest 

to  and  which,  thanks  to  its  neglect,  are  still 
in  their  infancy.  But,  as  the  human  mind 
is  not  able  to  follow  two  diametrically  op- 
posite directions  at  the  same  time,  it  would 
necessarily  have  rejected  the  mathematical 
sciences.  A  steamship  coming  from  an- 
other hemisphere,  one  In  which  men's 
minds  had  taken,  unknown  to  ourselves,  the 
road  which  our  own  has  actually  taken, 
would  have  seemed  to  us  as  wonderful,  as 
Incredible  as  the  phenomena  of  our  sub- 
consciousness seem  to  us  to-day.  We  should 
have  gone  very  far  in  what  at  present  we 
call  the  unknown  or  the  occult;  but  we 
should  have  known  hardly  anything  of  phy- 
sics, chemistry  or  mechanics,  unless,  which 
is  very  probable,  we  had  come  upon  them 
by  another  road  as  we  travelled  round  the 
occult.  It  is  true  that  certain  nations,  the 
Hindus  particularly,  the  Egyptians  and 
perhaps  the  Incas,  as  well  as  others.  In  all 
probability,    who   have   not   left   sufficient 

407 


The  Unknown  Guest 

traces,  thus  went  to  work  the  other  way 
and  obtained  nothing  decisive.  Is  this 
again  a  consequence  of  the  hopeless  Incom- 
patibility between  the  faculties  of  the  brain 
and  those  of  the  subconsciousness?  Pos- 
sibly; but  we  must  not  forget  that  we  are 
speaking  of  nations  which  never  possessed 
our  intellectual  habits,  our  passion  for  pre- 
cision, for  verification,  for  experimental 
certainty;  Indeed,  this  passion  has  only 
been  fully  developed  In  ourselves  within 
the  last  two  or  three  centuries.  It  Is 
to  be  presumed  therefore  that  the  Euro- 
pean would  have  gone  much  farther  In  the 
other  direction  than  the  Oriental.  Where 
would  he  have  arrived?  Endowed  with  a 
different  brain,  naturally  clearer,  more  ex- 
acting, more  logical,  less  credulous,  more 
practical,  closer  to  realities,  more  attentive 
to  details,  but  with  the  scientific  side  of  his 
intelligence  uncultivated,  would  he  have 
gone  astray  or  would  he  have  met  the  truths 

408 


The  Unknown  Guest 

which  we  are  still  seeking  and  which  may 
well  be  more  important  than  all  our  mate- 
rial conquests.     Ill-prepared,   ill-equipped, 
ill-balanced,  lacking  the  necessary  ballast  of 
experiments    and   proofs,    would   he    have 
been  exposed  to  the  dangers  familiar  to  all 
the  too-mystical  nations?     It  is  very  diffi- 
cult to  imagine  so.     But  the  hour  has  now 
perhaps  come  to  try  without  risk  what  he 
could  not  have  done  without  grave  peril. 
While  abandoning  no  whit  of  his  under- 
standing, which  is  small  compared  with  the 
boundless    scope   of   the    subconsciousness, 
but  which  Is  sure,  tried  and  docile,  he  can 
now  embark  upon  the  great  adventure  and 
try  to  do  that  which  has  not  been  done  be- 
fore.   It  is  a  matter  of  discovering  the  con- 
necting link  between  the  two  forces.     We 
are  still  ignorant  of  the  means  of  aiding, 
encouraging,    developing   and   taming   the 
greater  of  the  two  and  of  bringing  it  closer 
to  us;  the  quest  will  be  the  most  difficult, 

409 


The  Unknown  Guest 

the  most  mysterious  and,  in  certain  respects, 
the  most  dangerous  that  mankind  has  ever 
undertaken.  But  we  can  say  to  ourselves, 
without  fear  of  being  very  far  wrong,  that 
it  is  the  best  task  at  the  moment.  In  any 
case,  this  is  the  first  time  since  man  has 
existed  that  he  will  be  fronting  the  un- 
known with  such  good  weapons,  even  as  it 
is  also  the  first  time  since  its  awakening 
that  his  intelligence,  which  has  reached  a 
summit  from  which  it  can  understand  al- 
most everything,  will  at  last  receive  help 
from  outside  and  hear  a  voice  that  is  some- 
thing more  than  the  echo  of  its  own. 


THE  END 


410 


SI 


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